Already some of the burden of anxiety and desperate panic seemed to slip from her. Her shoulders straightened, and her voice became stronger as she began talking quietly and calmly. She had taken all this time since she had left Aces La Rue to steel herself to force her footsteps in the direction of Harley Street. It had required all of her courage to ring the bell, all of her desperate determination not to run away.
‘At the inquest the verdict was that she had committed suicide,’ she was saying. ‘But Julie had been driven to it. By him, as surely as if he had killed her himself.’
Dr. Morelle nodded. ‘I read the newspaper story,’ he said quietly.
She made a vague gesture. ‘It is difficult to explain about him, but he had a sort of power over women. He smoothed his way into Julie’s heart. She fell for it, she believed him, she was completely infatuated with him, nothing I said made any difference to her. She wouldn’t listen to me. As the elder sister I’d always tried to look after her. But with him I was helpless. Until, one night, she came home utterly shaken and silent. At last he had come out into the open. He’d put on his true colours. I never knew what happened. We agreed that she should go down to Little Tiplow to our cottage there, and she would get him out of her mind. That was the last I saw of her alive.’
‘So far as you knew,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘she had made up her mind this man was no good for her, and meant to forget him and start afresh?’
‘I was certain of it,’ she said. Her voice hardened. ‘Then, after the inquest, I was beginning to form the idea I had of settling with him.’
Dr. Morelle stirred in his chair. Miss Frayle was silent, her eyes on Thelma Grayson, full of pity for her. She shuddered at the thought that this girl had been driven by such emotional stress and desperate agony of mind that she had killed a man. The shadows had deepened in the corners of the study, Dr. Morelle sat outside the pool of light from the desk lamp, his dark eyes luminous under his knitted brows, the gaunt lines of his face set as if in ivory.
‘I knew he would be in his office at that time,’ Thelma Grayson said, more steadily now. ‘I went in and faced him, and told him what I was going to do, and why. He was frightened, and tried to come round the desk to me,’ she paused, ‘and I fired. He fell across the desk, sprawling.’
‘After you shot him,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘and he fell forward, across the desk, did you touch him?’
The other gave a grimace of horror. ‘No, I saw what I had done, and remember putting the gun in my pocket, and I went out. I hardly knew where I was going.’ She went on to describe how she had thrown the gun away.
‘Can you give me any description of the gun you used?’ Dr. Morelle said. ‘Your acquaintance with firearms is no doubt slight, but can you say whether it was an automatic pistol, flat in shape, with the cartridges in a clip in the butt? Or a revolver, with the cartridges in a revolving breech?’
‘It was a revolver,’ she said. She told him how she had spent the night and the following day; how she had thought of seeking Phil Stone’s help, then how she had gone to Aces La Rue. Miss Frayle noticed that Dr. Morelle made no mention of the fact that he had himself made the acquaintance of Phil Stone, at the night-club. It was typical of him, she thought, not to give anything away to anybody more than was absolutely necessary for his own elucidation of the matter that was engaging his attention.
Miss Frayle found herself recalling the silence as the body of the night-club owner was borne out of that sumptuous office, through the almost deserted buildings over which he had held sway, to be whisked through the shadowy streets to a refrigerated compartment in the mortuary, there to await a post-mortem on a cold slab. It was a drab last journey for Ray Mercury who had bossed his little world in Soho with undisputed power.
Inspector Hood and the police experts had still been working over the office, and Miss Frayle had watched Dr. Morelle move to Phil Stone, who stood staring morosely at the spot where Ray Mercury had sprawled.
‘You have experienced a somewhat distressing time, Mr. Stone,’ he said quietly, ‘so recently to have returned to England and to have encountered such dreadful happenings.’
A shadow had passed over the young man’s good-looking, sun-burnt face. ‘I’d hoped for a — happier leave,’ his voice charged with bitterness.
‘It was indeed a sad irony of Fate,’ Dr. Morelle had said, ‘that you should have been the first to discover the poor girl and now this man.’
There had been nothing implied in his tone, though Miss Frayle watching Phil Stone had seen his jaw tighten, and then make a move as if about to say something. Then he had numbly shook his head. It was fortunate for him, Miss Frayle had thought, that Dr. Morelle had estimated that Ray Mercury had been dead at least half an hour before Phil Stone had said he had found him in the office. The police-surgeon who had arrived with the photographer and finger-print experts had put the time of death at the same; and there had been the commissionaire and the waiter to establish that Phil Stone had arrived on the scene, as he said he had, some time after the night-club owner had obviously been dead.
Later Miss Frayle had walked back from Soho, across Oxford Street, to Harley Street, with Dr. Morelle. ‘There is nothing more refreshing to the mind than a walk through London’s streets in the early hours, Miss Frayle,’ he had said. They had left Phil Stone to make his way to his rooms off Baker Street, and to hold himself in readiness to attend the inquest. Inspector Hood had said good night to Dr. Morelle and Miss Frayle at the club-entrance, and looking back she had seen the neon sign still flickering out the words: The Black Moth.
‘In any case,’ Dr. Morelle was saying to Thelma Grayson, ‘it hardly seems to be the sort of thing you would have about the house. How did it come into your possession?’
‘I — I borrowed it,’ she said.
‘From whom?’ He noticed her hesitation. ‘This is most important,’ he said. ‘Unless I have your fullest confidence I can’t help you.’
‘I borrowed it from a man,’ she said. ‘He often came to the club. He has always been nice to me, I had been out with him two or three times. He’s what I suppose you’d call a man-about-town, but I knew he was interested in guns.’
‘So you just went and asked him to lend you one, and he did so without question?’ Dr. Morelle said drily.
‘I told him that there had been one or two attempted burglaries at the cottage, and I was scared, being on my own there, without Julie.’
‘What is this man’s name and address?’ And from the corner of his eye Dr. Morelle saw Miss Frayle’s pencil poised over her notebook.
‘Tracy Wright,’ again that hesitation before she answered him. ‘He has a flat in Parkview Court, just off Park Lane.’
Dr. Morelle got up and began slowly to pace up and down. Thelma Grayson watched his tall, gaunt form anxiously. His chin was sunk on his chest, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. She turned to Miss Frayle, who threw her a reassuring little smile. The study was silent, there was no sound of traffic, it might have been a million miles away from anywhere. Thelma’s eyes flickered over the crowded book-shelves and the filing-cabinets, and wondered what strange secrets they contained, what other extraordinary confessions had these four walls heard? What other callers on Dr. Morelle had sat here and laid bare their souls to this amazing man?
‘You have told me what happened,’ Dr. Morelle said to her at last, ‘but I should like to know why, having read the suicide report in the newspaper, you didn’t decide to stay silent? It would be regarded as suicide, the man you had killed would go tidily to his grave, with your own part in his death unknown.’
‘I was appalled by what I’d done,’ she said. ‘At first, my idea had been to give myself up, to pay the penalty for the crime I’d committed. Then, when I read that it appeared to the police that he had committed suicide, then it seemed I couldn’t have shot him.’ She broke off, and then continued. ‘If I had and they had made a mistake, was it my job to tell them they were wrong? He deserved what he got, wou
ld the fact that I confessed to killing him help anybody?’
She hung her head for a few moments. She lifted up her face again and Dr. Morelle studied her, his eyes on hers. He contemplated the tip of his cigarette, watching the smoke spiral upwards. Miss Frayle regarded him over her spectacles, wondering what his decision would be.
‘The police have formed their own conclusions,’ he said musingly, ‘and perhaps no useful purpose would be served by upsetting their theory, at any rate at this moment. I shall be attending the inquest to-morrow, as a matter of fact. Afterwards I will decide whether there is any further information I can usefully contribute to the matter. Meanwhile you may rest assured that you need have no grounds for further anxiety or apprehension for the future. Leave everything to me.’
She stood up and made a move as if to thank him, but his face had suddenly become stern and forbidding. ‘Please understand, however, that I do not condone the fact that you took the law into your own hands. Your action was reckless and quite dreadful.’
Thelma Grayson broke down then. Her hands went to her face, and she rocked in her agony of mind. Miss Frayle’s notebook fell to the floor as she jumped to her feet, and crossed to the other to pat her shoulder comfortingly.
Dr. Morelle was leaning thoughtfully against the desk, unperturbed by this display of feminine emotion. And then he seemed to tower over Thelma Grayson as he stared hypnotically into her tear-filled eyes.
‘There may arise reasons why the circumstances surrounding Ray Mercury’s death should be probed a trifle deeper,’ he said. ‘Even if only on account of your peace of mind.’ He smiled at her bleakly, paused, and then added: ‘I will prescribe two things for you which should prove beneficial, first a sedative, to be followed by a good night’s sleep.’
And he turned to his desk for a piece of notepaper and began to scribble quickly, his face calm and enigmatic beneath the light from the desk lamp.
Chapter Fifteen
Miss Frayle sat at her desk, all the notes Dr. Morelle had dictated to her on the Ray Mercury case staring up at her in a thick heap.
It was the morning following Thelma Grayson’s visit, and Dr. Morelle had gone to give his evidence at the inquest upon the late owner of the Black Moth. Miss Frayle had been reading through the typewritten pages, wandering, it seemed to her, deeper into a maze of conflicting notions. How could the Phil Stone story and Thelma Grayson’s story fit in?
It was about midday as Miss Frayle puzzled her way through the typewritten pages, that an idea came to her, like a blinding light. Heavens, she thought, her eyes shining, her fingers trembling as she clutched the page she held. She was sure that was it. If that girl told the truth, that explained everything. She must tell Dr. Morelle. She was sure he would see it like this, it was one of her flashes of insight.
Full of excitement at her discovery she jumped up and paced about the study with nervous steps. Presently she heard Dr. Morelle’s key in the front door lock, and she hurried out into the hall to greet him. She had not expected him back so soon.
‘You’re back quickly,’ she said. ‘What did they decide? Was it —?’
‘On the evidence put before them,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘the Coroner’s jury returned the verdict that Ray Mercury had committed suicide.’ As Miss Frayle trotted after him to the study, he went on: ‘You must remember that the Coroner was not in the possession of certain facts which as it happens are known to us.’
‘Doctor,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I understand that. Now, there’s something —’
Dr. Morelle had entered his study and sat down behind his desk. ‘It has been a wearying morning, Miss Frayle,’ he said, interrupting her. ‘Some coffee, don’t you think, before we set to work.’
Miss Frayle burst out. ‘I’ve got an idea. It came to me in a flash, and I’m sure it will solve everything.’
‘You astound me,’ Dr. Morelle said imperturbably. ‘No doubt one of your more highly-coloured flights of imagination. Very interesting, of course, but once again I must remind you that it is only by a process of skilled ratiocination that the truth can be arrived at.’
‘But I’m sure Miss Grayson —’
‘Coffee, Miss Frayle,’ Dr. Morelle said.
Miss Frayle compressed her lips and turned on her heel and marched from the room, the carriage of her head on her slim shoulders showing her sense of frustration. Dr. Morelle smiled after her, and sat thoughtfully. He did not stir from his chair, but remained as if carved from some sort of pulsating metal, until Miss Frayle presently returned with a tray of coffee, hot and with its appetizing aroma. Somewhat mutinously Miss Frayle sat down. Then she relaxed a little as she decided she would bide her time to explode her bombshell and shatter Dr. Morelle’s complacent conceit.
‘First, we have the undoubted fact, reaffirmed by the evidence at the inquest,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘that Ray Mercury was found lying on his back, an automatic pistol near his hand. It was further established that he was shot dead by a bullet from this same pistol. It seemed clear enough, taking into account the suicide-note which the deceased left behind that he had taken his own life.’
‘Yes,’ Miss Frayle said, ‘that all seems clear enough.’
‘I am glad that you agree with me,’ he said ironically. ‘But against all that apparently indisputable evidence, we have Miss Grayson’s extraordinary revelations last night, that she had entered the office, and shot him dead. According to her account, the time when she perpetrated this crime fits in with the approximate time of Mercury’s death.’
Miss Frayle could sit still no longer. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see,’ her glasses slipping down her nose, her hands fluttering agitatedly as she tried to gain his attention, ‘it’s quite easy to realize what happened.’ She broke off for a moment as she caught his sardonic expression bent upon her over his coffee-cup. Then she hurried on. ‘She did fire at him, as she said, but — she missed.’
Somehow what she was saying didn’t sound as if it was of such epoch-making proportions, after all; her idea was not perhaps such a world-shattering one. He continued to regard her calmly at any rate from under lowered brows. She was acutely disappointed to find that she had not caused the sensation she had expected. In fact, a certain amount of alarm filled her at Dr. Morelle’s calm, and a sick feeling took possession of her. She had blundered again.
‘I had considered that possibility myself,’ Dr. Morelle said coldly, ‘and I rejected it.’
Miss Frayle sat back, deflated. She looked at him miserably. ‘But it seems so plain, I was quite certain that she hadn’t killed him.’
‘Miss Frayle,’ he said, ‘satisfying though your solution might be, I would remind you that the revolver she said she had used, and she was specific in her description of it, would fire a bullet very different from that of the type which killed Ray Mercury. It would have been a heavier-calibre bullet, and there would have been visible damage to the panelling behind the desk where Mercury was standing. Or if her aim had been so that the bullet struck the desk there must have been evidence of it. I myself, in my swift scrutiny of the room, perceived no signs of such evidence. The police, in their more meticulous search, did not find any damage, either, which might have been caused by the bullet, or any sign of the bullet itself. Therefore, Miss Frayle, if Miss Grayson fired, she did not miss.’
‘Oh, dear,’ Miss Frayle said. ‘It does seem clear now that it couldn’t have been what I thought it was,’ she shook her head dejectedly. ‘I can’t understand it. It’s all so puzzling.’
‘A solution might be,’ Dr. Morelle said, ‘that Miss Grayson lied to us about the type of revolver which she tells us she used, and later so conveniently discarded. That in fact she shot him with the automatic. On the other hand,’ he went on, ‘it would require that she had learned the nature of the gun which actually had been used, in order to present us with the idea that she had used a totally different type, a revolver. She did not seem to me to be possessed of s
uch a cold-blooded calculating temperament. On the contrary, I am quite certain that she acted as she did in a mood of burning desperation, her judgment clouded, her sole thought being to revenge her sister’s death. We may also discard any idea of collusion between her and Stone.’
‘You mean they might have worked this together?’ Miss Frayle said. The idea had never occurred to her. ‘They probably are close,’ she said, ‘because of her sister.’
Dr. Morelle nodded. ‘Quite,’ he said, ‘and the possibility that the two of them had planned to murder the man and had carried it out together had presented itself. But I rejected it,’ he went on, ‘for the reason that if that were the case, why did she come to me and re-open the murder when the impression that it was a case of suicide was already attained? No,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that is out of the question. We must seek elsewhere, Miss Frayle, if we want to discover the truth.’
‘But how can we find out what really happened? Everyone, except us, seems quite happy to leave it as it is. There’s no proof to the contrary.’
‘There is proof, somewhere,’ Dr. Morelle said. ‘First I shall look into the question of this revolver that Miss Grayson used.’
Miss Frayle was looking thoughtful again. ‘Then there’s the suicide-note.’
Dr. Morelle stared at her abstractedly. ‘The strange thing is, Miss Frayle,’ he said, ‘that those who knew Mercury by reputation, such as Inspector Hood, found it hard to believe that he would commit suicide for the reason he gave. I must say that my own views concur with theirs.’
‘Then someone else wrote it?’
‘That would be the logical inference to be deduced,’ Dr. Morelle said. ‘It would not prove an impossible task for someone to forge his handwriting.’
Miss Frayle stared at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide. ‘Who?’ she said.
His gaze was suddenly hooded. ‘When we know more about what took place in that office,’ he said, ‘who was there with Ray Mercury when he met his death, then we shall doubtless discover who wrote the farewell-message. All in good time.’
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