Death in the Dentist’s Chair: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  “A good few. Mostly foreigners whose relations have gone missing, but no one that’s ever seen her before. From the look of her I should say she’s a bit better class than most of the people that have called, but it’s difficult to tell nowadays.”

  Arkwright, in all the years of his service, had never been able to accustom himself to the mortuary. Today, the pitiful figure of the murdered woman, lying unknown and friendless on the marble slab, seemed to make the dreary sordidness of the place even more apparent.

  As he took stock of the waxen face upturned to his he endorsed most of the inspector’s comments. A white cloth had been folded and laid under the woman’s chin, so that the cause of death was not apparent, and her face wore that enigmatic smile that is usually associated with a peaceful end. Her features had been handsome once, but trouble or illness had sharpened them and drawn deep lines about the mouth and round the eyes. Arkwright put her age at about forty-five, but realised that, had life proved hard, she might easily be younger. He examined the hands, smooth skinned and well cared for, with long, highly polished nails, and agreed with the inspector that she did not belong to the working classes. On one point, however, he differed from his subordinate. In spite of the marks on her clothing and the nails, cut into the sharp point so beloved of the foreign manicure, he had a strong suspicion that she was English, or, at any rate, Nordic, by birth. Her good looks had been of the milkmaid type, rarely if ever seen in any of the Latin countries, and her hair, though faded to a dull yellow and streaked with grey, was abundant and gave signs of having once been beautiful. Arkwright, who had crossed the Channel many times in the course of his service, knew that only one French woman in a thousand is so dowered.

  He wrote “Dane or Swede, possibly an Englishwoman,” in his note book and turned to her clothes, which lay neatly folded by her side. These confirmed his conviction that she was no working woman. Though not expensive, each item was well cut and of good material and showed a taste that even Arkwright’s male eye could appreciate. The only labels on them were those of The Louvre and the bootmaker, Dufour, the shoes being, incidentally, exceptionally smart and expensive. “The shawl” which the Inspector had alluded to and which had been wrapped round her throat and upper part of her body to stem the flow of blood, turned out to be a plaid travelling rug and Arkwright’s first step, on returning to the Yard, was to send a man to Victoria, on the chance that a porter might be able to identify her as one of the arrivals on the boat train. His next action was to ring up Miller’s house.

  Mr. Miller was at lunch, but, on hearing Arkwright’s name, he came to the telephone.

  “You have some news about the emerald?” he demanded.

  “I’m afraid not,” was Arkwright’s answer, “but there has been an unexpected development. If you could give us a few minutes of your time here we should be grateful.”

  “You wish me to come to you?”

  “At New Scotland Yard. Yes. If you will name your own time, I shall be waiting for you.”

  There was a pause, then:

  “It is not convenient, but, if you think it necessary, I will come at once. As soon as I have finished my lunch. In three quarters of an hour I will be with you.”

  He was better than his word and was ten minutes before his time when he was shown into Arkwright’s room.

  As Arkwright rose to greet him, he found himself wondering whether he had not been doing him an injustice after all. Judging by his looks he was feeling his wife’s death more deeply than had seemed possible the day before. His face was grey now, rather than sallow, and his shoulders sagged as though the mere action of walking was an effort. The man had aged ten years in a single night.

  “This is very good of you, Mr. Miller,” he said, drawing a chair out on the opposite side of the big office table.

  Miller threw his hands out.

  “Anything I can do to help,” he intoned, in that surprisingly sonorous voice.

  Arkwright sat down opposite to him, opened a drawer and took out the two knives. His eyes on the other man’s face, he placed them on the table in front of him.

  Miller’s mouth twitched. He tried to speak, failed and swallowed convulsively. Then he mastered himself.

  “Two knives?” he ejaculated. “But there was only one...”

  “I’ll tell you about the other in a minute, Mr. Miller” said Arkwright. “What I want you to look at is the inscription on them.”

  Miller peered at the blades, removed his glasses, slowly took a case from his pocket, extracted a second pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and adjusted them on his nose. Arkwright, watching him closely, noticed that his hands were not quite steady and wondered whether he were not playing for time.

  “May one pick them up?” asked Miller.

  “Certainly.”

  Miller pored over the inscriptions, compared them with each other, then laid the knives down on the table with a little shake of his head.

  “The numbers are quite clear,” he said, “but these signs, what are they? They do not look like Chinese.”

  “You don’t recognise them as Chinese symbols?” enquired Arkwright blandly.

  Miller shrugged his shoulders.

  “I should not recognise them if they were,” he pointed out. “As I told you, I know nothing of Chinese writing.”

  Arkwright sighed.

  “I was in hopes you might be able to help us,” he said. “You don’t recognise them as belonging to any language you do know?”

  Miller shook his head.

  “I have never seen anything like them,” he asserted. “It is curious about the numbers, though, of course, almost every nation in the world uses those numerals.”

  He hesitated, then:

  “I remember you showed me the knife that was found beside my poor wife. Is it one of these?”

  His voice broke on the words and he seemed genuinely affected.

  Arkwright picked up one of the knives.

  “This one,” he said. “I’m sorry if this has been painful, Mr. Miller, but the inscriptions escaped our notice in the first instance and I had to make sure that they conveyed nothing to you. I suppose nothing has occurred to you in the interval that might have some bearing on the crime?”

  Miller, who was replacing his glasses in the case, raised his head and met Arkwright’s gaze with the utmost candour.

  “Nothing, I regret to say,” he asserted positively. “It is all a mystery to me. Is there anything else?”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s just one more thing I must ask you to do, rather an unpleasant one. I have not told you yet where we got the second of these knives.”

  Briefly he described the finding of the woman’s body and the discovery of the weapon. Miller’s expression, when he had finished, was one of pure amazement.

  “But the whole thing is meaningless!” he exclaimed. “First my poor wife, then this woman, who can have no connection whatever with us. And yet, judging by the weapons, there must be some link between the two crimes. In my wife’s case, I feel convinced that the motive was one of robbery, but this other was not a rich woman, you say?”

  “In so far as one can judge, she was not, but it is difficult to say what she may have had on her. Everything was taken by the murderer.”

  Miller hesitated.

  “You wish me to look at this woman?” he suggested unwillingly.

  “I’m afraid so. Owing to the possible connection between the two crimes we must make sure that she was not known to you. Simply a matter of form, you understand.”

  Miller nodded.

  “It is very unpleasant to me,” he said, “but I see that it is necessary. Can we go now? I have a busy afternoon before me.”

  “By the way,” remarked Arkwright, as he rose to accompany him, “you told me you were meeting a friend by the boat train last night. Was it very crowded?”

  Miller glanced at him in surprise.

  “There were a good many people. It was troublesome, as my friend did not come and I
had to see them all off the platform before I was sure I had not missed her.”

  Arkwright turned sharply.

  “You were expecting a lady?”

  “An old friend of my wife’s,” Miller explained. “It was all a little awkward for me. You see, my wife had invited this lady to stay with us while she was in London and, in my trouble yesterday morning, I forgot all about her. When I did remember, it seemed best to meet her and explain the circumstances to her. It was a relief to me when she did not turn up.”

  “Had she mentioned that train specifically?”

  “Certainly. She said she was coming by it. I have her letter at home. But it would not surprise me if she had changed her plans. She is an actress and was a friend of my wife’s when she was on the stage, and, like all artistes, she is probably temperamental.”

  An idea struck him.

  “You think this poor woman who was murdered may have come by that train,” he exclaimed. “If she did and if, by some chance, I did miss my friend, it is possible she left the station alone. You are right. I must make sure that I do not know her.”

  “She was killed over an hour before that train got into the station,” said Arkwright. “But, of course, there is a possibility that your friend changed her plans and crossed earlier.”

  He led the way down the stairs. On the road to the mortuary Miller’s excitement grew as he discussed the possibility of his guest’s having altered her arrangements, and by the time they got there he was already convinced that yet another appalling tragedy had come into his life.

  “Why should these things happen to me?” he almost wailed. “Neither my wife nor myself have ever wished anyone any harm. It is as if a curse had come upon us.”

  Arkwright stared at him in surprise. This was a very different person to the pompous, rather rapacious individual he had interviewed the night before. At the door of the mortuary Miller paused.

  “What a horrible place,” he muttered, and again Arkwright had a feeling that he was trying to gain time. Then, suddenly, as though he had decided to get the thing over, he straightened his shoulders and walked ahead of his companion into the room.

  “I have never seen her before,” he announced, as soon as his eyes fell on the woman. “My God, what a relief!”

  He pulled out a voluminous handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. Arkwright noticed with a certain grim amusement that the linen was none too clean.

  “No doubt you’ll hear from your friend tomorrow,” he said reassuringly. “These convey nothing to you, I suppose?”

  He indicated the neatly folded pile of clothing. Miller regarded the blood-stained rug with aversion.

  “Thank goodness, no,” he asserted with conviction, as he turned and made hurriedly for the door.

  Arkwright saw him to his car and was on his way back to his room at the Yard when he was stopped by a constable with the news that a Mrs. Snipe had been enquiring for him.

  His surprise was not unmixed with satisfaction. From the first he had hoped he might cull something useful from the garrulous dresser.

  “Is she here now?” he asked.

  “Waiting, sir.”

  At the sight of him she leaped to her feet, a dark flush looming through the crude make-up on her face.

  “I’ve just seen the account in the papers,” she panted. “Is it true that Sir Richard Pomfrey was in that house when my poor lamb was murdered?”

  “He was in the waiting room,” said Arkwright. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because he was the only one there that knew Miss Lottie in the old days. You ask him if he didn’t!”

  Arkwright figured his chin thoughtfully.

  “But it doesn’t follow that he meant her any harm,” he objected, hoping that opposition would only incite her to further revelations.

  “No one could have wished her any harm,” sniffed Snipey dolefully. “The poor lamb! But he was the only one there that knew her. You ask him!”

  “He has made no secret of the fact. But I understand from him that, though he knew her, he was not an intimate friend of hers.”

  Snipey, her whole body quivering with indignation, thrust a flushed face into his.

  “Wasn’t he?” she snorted. “Then why did he give her that diamond brooch? The very brooch she was wearing when she was struck down!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Constantine was lunching at the Club. His companion, the expression on whose plump, good-natured face bore tribute to the excellence of his digestion, was senior partner in a well-known firm of chartered accountants and a noted chess player. The two men often fed together and, if Constantine seemed a shade more silent than usual today, Gibbs, who was as garrulous as he was amusing, did not notice it. He could be depended on to keep the ball rolling while his companion pursued his own line of thought uninterrupted.

  Constantine had food for reflection. Arkwright had rung him up just before lunch telling him of the second murder and the finding of the weapon, and the letters M.A.U.H.H. were playing hide and seek in his mind as he automatically supplied the fuel necessary to keep his companion’s tongue wagging. It was not until the meal was over and the two men had adjourned to the smoking room for their coffee that he resolutely dismissed the subject of this second outrage from his thoughts and deftly brought the conversation round to the Millers. It was a forlorn hope, but what Gibbs did not know about the financial status of almost any London firm was not worth knowing and there was just a chance that he might be able to contribute something useful. His response was immediate.

  “I see you were there,” he exclaimed, his fresh-coloured face alight with curiosity. “Must have been a ghastly business.”

  “I was,” answered Constantine, humouring him. “I’ve never seen a more appalling sight.”

  Gibbs waited, in the hope of a more detailed description, then, as none came:

  “What do you make of it? Robbery? The papers didn’t give that impression.”

  “As a matter of fact, I understand that some jewellery is missing,” answered Constantine, with the air of one imparting a state secret.

  So far, the news of the missing pendant had not leaked out, but, knowing that Miller would make no secret of his loss, Constantine saw no urgent need for discretion. Gibbs’ eyes gleamed. This was inside information, such as the layman loves.

  “Then the police think that robbery was the motive?” he pursued eagerly.

  “It seems the most obvious explanation,” admitted Constantine. “The poor woman has been literally asking for trouble for a long time. The wonder is that no one has had a try at those jewels before. Miller’s a rich man, I imagine, but, judging from what she was wearing when I saw her, he must have found her an expensive proposition.”

  “Oh, he’s sound enough financially,” said Gibbs. “He’s not a client of ours, but I was talking yesterday to a fellow who went through his books a month or so ago. It’s a very flourishing business, but, from all accounts, he didn’t fork out easily. To his wife, least of all!”

  “You don’t think he was responsible for the bulk of the gewgaws she was wearing?” queried Constantine sharply.

  Gibbs laughed.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” he said, “though I fancy some of them may be relics of the past. She was a bit of a gold digger in the old days, you know. But, apart from all that, she had a mania for buying jewels and what you saw must be only a small part of what she possessed. The trouble was, she didn’t always pay for them. As I said, Miller didn’t part with his money easily.”

  “Are you speaking from personal knowledge?” asked Constantine, “or just hearsay?”

  “I know this,” answered Gibbs drily. “She was on the black list of several of the big London people. I’ve seen their books. She used to say openly that her husband hardly ever gave her anything. Owing to his business connections and the fact that she was, in her way, a good customer, she got longer rope than most people and they generally managed to collect from Miller himself in the en
d, but she owed money everywhere and was always complaining that he kept her short of cash.”

  “In fact, instead of being the rich woman one thought she might have been actually hard up,” suggested Constantine thoughtfully.

  “She was being dunned right and left and, I should imagine, was afraid to appeal to her husband,” asserted Gibbs.

  After Gibbs had left him Constantine lingered in his chair by the fire, his eyes closed, engaged in the not too pleasing contemplation of the Miller menage. When he at last shook himself out of his abstraction and left the club it was to pick up a taxi and direct the driver to an address in Hatton Garden.

  He found the man he was seeking in his office, a Greek, who had set up as a jeweller in London many years ago and who owed much of his success to the patronage of the Constantines. He greeted his patron’s son as an old friend.

  “You’ve come at the right moment,” he exclaimed. “I’ve got an intaglio here that will make your mouth water. The museum people are after it already.”

  With the deliberation of the very old he unlocked his safe and produced a ring. If Constantine chafed under the delay he did not show it and the old man had no fault to find with his appreciation of the gem. It was not until it was safely stowed away again that he broached the real object of his visit.

  “I suppose this Miller case has made something of a stir in this part of the world,” he said.

  The old Greek cast a shrewd glance at him as he unlocked a drawer in his table and produced the cigars that he kept only for his most favoured clients.

  “So it was not only for my beaux yeux that you came to see me,” was his dry comment. “If you would find out all about Miller, go to Hatton Garden, hein? When I saw your name in the papers I began to expect you.”

  He leaned forward to hold a match to Constantine’s cigar, took one himself and, when it was well alight, leaned back in his chair and stretched his short legs out under the table.

  “You shall have all I can tell you,” he said. “There has been talk, yes, but they were not popular, the Millers, in this quarter. In business he was respected. There was nothing against him here, you understand. But his wife did not mix well, she had social aspirations and showed her opinion of her husband’s associates too plainly. And, at best, Miller himself was not a pleasant fellow.”