Mr. Twing’s eyes roved brilliantly to Miss Mumby’s face. “Trances, séances, visions, an animal crank!” he declared. “All significant, all significant!” He turned suddenly on Cantrip. “And our worthy friend here—with his hob-nailed liver and tendency to apoplexy—we all know the eccentricities of retired military gentlemen with nothing to occupy their minds.”
He paused a moment, and joined his slender-boned hands in front of him. “It might have been me; oh, yes, it might have been me,” he admitted. “I don’t remember doing it, but I can imagine my unconscious self getting quite a lot of pleasure out of strangling someone”—he made a gesture towards Miss Mumby, who shuddered and drew back—“and then slicing them up and putting them here and there.”
“Really, Mr. Twing, if I took you seriously,” retorted Miss Mumby, “I shouldn’t care to be alone in the hotel with you.”
“And I tell you what I think, Twing,” remarked the Colonel heatedly, “and that is that if you go round talking like that in the police’s hearing you’ll find yourself in the dock before you know where you are. Maniac, indeed! Budge is a sly devil and probably won’t admit it, but if you ask me, the fellow who murdered Mrs. Budge was after something, and Budge knows what it was. What’s more, between you and me and the gatepost, I think he’s got it. I don’t pretend to be particularly observant, but friend Budge has been dead scared about something to-day.”
“Anyway, we’ve got the police in now,” stated Mr. Twing with malicious satisfaction, “and here they’ll stay until they’ve either found the murderer or somebody they can convince a jury did the murder. Meanwhile, they’ll peer and pry into everyone’s private affairs.”
He advanced on Miss Mumby and his beady eyes twinkled at her. “Do your private affairs bear investigation?” he asked. “Do the Colonel’s? Do mine? Oh, we haven’t murdered anyone, or robbed anyone, or blackmailed anyone, but we all have our private weaknesses, our little vices, haven’t we? And all of them to be dragged out into the light of day.” He lifted his talons in a gesture that was a mockery of despair. “Poor little vices, so kindly and happily tucked away in an hotel in Kensington, and now these brutes of policemen are going to trample all over them with their great clumsy feet!”
Miss Mumby tossed her head. “You needn’t try to frighten me, Mr. Twing. If anybody ought to be scared I fancy it’s you. I am going to give the police all the help I can as a citizen, and so far as it assists to find the solution of this terrible crime. Beyond that I shall not go. If they try to pry into affairs that are no concern of theirs I shall put my foot down.”
Miss Mumby folded her arms and looked fiercely at Twing. He divined that putting the foot down would be a formidable and awe-inspiring process in her case.
“An excellent spirit—the true Scots independence,” he cackled. “Keep it up—you’ll need to. Here’s a little prophecy I’m going to make. There’ll be another murder in this hotel before we’re much older—there’s someone walking about now who expects to be the victim, too! Well, well, I must go and do some work now.”
Twing shuffled out of the room, but at the door he paused and turned.
“One word of advice, my dear Miss Mumby. Don’t wear those black velvet bands round your beautiful white throat. They’re too tempting to the Unconscious.” He made a strangling gesture with his claws. “Asking for it, absolutely. Even a sane man like myself can hardly resist it!”
The door closed, but they heard his high-pitched cackling as he went down the corridor.
Chapter Eight
A Message From The Victim
I
THE technique of criminal investigation is based on the assumption that the murderer leaves, unlike Theseus, three strands which will bring the investigator to the heart of his labyrinth of crime. The three strands together are strong enough to hang him. Bereft of one, the prosecuting counsel can rarely weave a rope strong enough for the hangman’s purposes.
The first and obvious is physical ability. A murder occurs between ten and four. Five people only are known to have passed into the house and seen the victim in that time. Which of them is tied to the murder by the other strands of motive and material evidence?
A cherished desire for revenge, an angry quarrel, self-interest—out of these the criminal investigator can spin the second strand, needing only one more to make it a fatal web.
That third strand is the material clue to which the police of this country, probably rightly, give especial prominence. The finger-print, the revolver purchased a day of two before, the shred of clothing—here is a witness amenable to the direct examination and cross-examination of experts, something to be seen and handled, not quite direct evidence, but partaking of its nature.
Each of these three strands may lead the investigator through innumerable twists and turns of the labyrinth; each may lead him to more than one suspect. With the patience of an institution and the vast resources of bureaucracy, the Yard follows up each one of these avenues, exploring each turning off it—cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac. The most obvious trails are followed first, but as the Yard draws blank it retraces its steps, and the less obvious are pursued. The criminal must have a feeling similar to a fox who has taken refuge from the hounds in a hiding-place from which he can see them draw false trail after trail, only to return to the scent again and pick up another. It is their métier; they have nothing else to do, and sooner or later, unless a hundredth chance intervenes, they will pick up the right scent and the hunt will be up.
Bray’s first line of approach was that of physical possibility. Was it an outside or an inside job? The subsequent disposal of the corpse pointed most strongly to an inside job. In addition, if it were an outside job, the murderer must have escaped from the house subsequently to the time when the doors were guarded.
It transpired that during the quarter of an hour before the doors were guarded, there had been at least one servant near them who would certainly have noticed a stranger. The times did not make an earlier escape remotely feasible.
It was possible that the murderer had escaped by one of the windows. Bray could hardly believe he would have attempted this in a brightly lit and fairly crowded street. While he was verifying the alibis of the household, he came upon evidence which disposed of an exit from windows at the back.
Kitty Higgins, a chambermaid, was somewhat confused when she was asked as to where she had been between nine and ten. She stated that it was her afternoon off, but Bray pressed her and soon extracted from her the fact that between those times she had been giving a lingering farewell at the back door to the baker’s roundsman, her companion of the evening. They had glanced up several times at the windows of the house to see that they were not overlooked, and Bray felt in the circumstances that, at any rate, as an initial simplification, he would eliminate an outside job.
This left only the inmates of the hotel at the time of the murder as possibilities, and the bulk of these were soon weeded out. All the hotel staff during that hour were able to give convincing alibis for each other. The nurse was vouched for by the fact that Miss Sanctuary was talking to her at the moment of her assault, and there was a cast-iron alibi for Eppoliki, Colonel Cantrip, Mrs. Walton, Venables and Lady Viola Merritt.
Miss Geranium and Miss Hectoring were brewing a final night-cap of malted milk at the time. Mr. Winterton, Mr. Twing, Mr. Blood, Mrs. Salterton-Deeley and Miss Mumby, however, were each in their rooms from eight till ten, and these were provisionally marked as possible suspects.
Therefore after his first rough preliminary investigation, Bray was left with six suspects as a nucleus for further investigation, those residents whose movements were unaccounted for at the time, and Mr. Budge.
Mr. Budge was an object of prime suspicion because there was definite evidence that he was on the scene of the murder at or about the time of its commission. The other three were secondary suspects inasmuch that none of them could produce any proof of the fact that they were in their rooms at the time. Needless to say
, at this stage of the investigation, Bray could not personally interrogate them beyond obtaining a bare statement of their whereabouts, but he could, and did, find out indirectly from the other residents and members of the staff that any one of them could have left his or her room, gone in the adjoining bedroom, climbed over the balcony into Mrs. Budge’s room and returned again without being seen. It would need luck and careful timing, but it could be done. He traced various possible movements of the characters on the large plans he had drawn up, and came to the conclusion that it was physically possible for any of his four suspects, or even two working in conjunction, to have performed the murder.
He also put it down as a working hypothesis that Miss Sanctuary might have been an accessory before the fact. It would have made the murderer’s task very much easier had Miss Sanctuary been expecting him, and the assault and tying up might easily have been staged to divert suspicion.
Although this hypothesis had to be admitted as a possibility, Bray realized it would be useless unless he could discover some motive linking Miss Sanctuary with the murderer or the victim.
His more immediate problem was to link one of the suspects themselves to the crime, either by a material clue or a motive. Experience told him that apart from crimes of sudden anger, or of passion, the motives of a crime are all financial. Financial transactions are almost inseparable from documentary evidence, and he therefore spent half an hour going through Mrs. Budge’s desk.
Mrs. Budge had an orderly mind. All the business of documents inseparable to the running of even such a small affair as the Garden Hotel were docketed. Her cash-book and other books of account were posted up to date, although the private ledger was missing. Her business correspondence was filed in a simple letter-file.
Mr. Budge’s desk, which Bray took the liberty of going through without previously asking permission, was equally businesslike. The laundry business, Bray gathered from a glance through the private ledger, did not do much more than pay its way. Yet of personal correspondence there was not a trace, not even a letter from a friend.
Bray felt that this fact in itself was significant. A person who either has no friends or destroys all personal correspondence is an odd creature and demands investigation. So leaving Sergeant Billings and his myrmidons to complete their methodical search for the material clue—a task at which they were, he recognized, more competent than he was himself—he decided to go round to the firm of solicitors whose address he had found among Mrs. Budge’s papers.
II
The room of the proprietor of the Mercury who, in conformity with the Northcliffe tradition was always spoken of by his staff as “the Chief,” is known, at least by repute, to everyone in Fleet Street. It is situated on the top floor of the glittering lemon-yellow and gilt building which houses the Mercury and its satellite “evening,” and from its window can be seen the smoky vista of South London with, on sunny days, the Crystal Palace sparkling in the distance like a shining angel guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden of the Surrey countryside beyond.
The room is completely square, with a plain oak floor, destitute of covering, and with ceiling and walls plainly distempered in a lighter shade of the lemon-yellow which makes the Mercury facade so unique. The sliding door is flush with the walls and virtually concealed, and the room is lighted by panels in the ceiling. The Chief’s desk is a plain, massive structure, and never, in the history of the Mercury, has it had more than one document on it, and that document the one the Chief happened to be dealing with at the time.
The only other articles of furniture in the room, beside the Chief’s chair, are five plain oak chairs disposed symmetrically round the desk and screwed to the floor.
There is apparently no telephone. Flush with the desk is a grille concealing the diaphragm of a dictograph, and through the meshes have come at various times the voices of a President speaking from America, a Prime Minister from Chequers, a King from Cannes, and a celebrated assassin threatening vengeance from a remote South American Republic. Leaning back in his chair, with the pose that Sir Evan Pouter, R.A., has made familiar, the Chief had gazed unwinkingly at the Crystal Palace and answered each with the same mellow suavity that had made a tortured old bull of a politician, with a dozen of the Mercury’s darts sticking in his hide, describe him at a public meeting as “the slimiest old devil in Christendom.”
Well, the Chief at any rate had inherited a great tradition. A newspaper was not for him a mere vehicle for profit, whereby the Pelion of debentures might be piled on the Ossa of equity. First and foremost (at how many journalists’ functions had the mellow voice repeated this phrase!) he was a working journalist. It was his pride to return from some great banquet or spectacle at which he had been an honoured guest, and write out a report of it in his meticulous rounded hand. The sub who knew his Chief did not hesitate to slash it to ribbons and put it in finally as a three-line paragraph.
Even Charles, whose imperturbability was the most cherished feature of his existence, felt a little nervous when he sat in the chair reserved for friends in the Chief’s room. What was the Mercury, he asked himself? A paper that by pandering to the basest sensationalism of the common people climbed on steppingstones of discarded ethics to higher things. A paper whose public had brains with linings so corroded and crusted by jazz, sentimental films and cheap literature that the most earth-shaking events of the world had to be predigested and peptonized before they could be absorbed. A paper whose political policy had been invariably allied with the most reactionary and antisocial elements of English life. A paper whose tip for the Derby had never once come off…
Yet a paper where power one could feel, like a Shekinah glory, reflected on the faces with which, as a representative of the paper, one came into contact. Politicians, suavely longing for the Mercury’s endorsement, actresses yearning with big eyes at the Mercury’s reporter, bishops oilily congratulating the power of the press, press agents craven with desire for a “front-page story.” And here, in the Holy of holies as it were, was this power incarnate—the Chief.
“I think I know more about you, as a friend of the family, than anyone in the building,” the Chief was saying. “That’s why I pressed for you to be put on this assignment. Are you going to justify my confidence in you?”
Charles was examining his gloves assiduously. “Have my stories been all right up to the present?” he asked.
“Oh, excellent, my dear boy, excellent. As a working journalist, I congratulate you. As the editor of this paper, I want something more.” He paused.
“Now we are getting down to brass tacks at last,” thought Charles.
“Anyone can report a matter of this kind, if they were in your position and were competent journalists.” The Chief had been speaking to Charles as if to his dictograph. Now he shot a glance at him which Charles parried, or at any rate palliated, as best he could with his monocle. “You’re in a privileged position. You’ve got brains. Find out who really murdered Mrs. Budge, or at any rate find some material clue before the police do, so that the Mercury can get the credit—so that whenever we write about a crime in future, our public will think of us as the paper that was cleverer than the police.” He waved away the incipient remonstrance that was agitating Charles. “Oh, I know what you are going to say—how papers have had to drop the special crime investigator because of the law of libel and because they obstructed the police. Well, you mustn’t be libellous and you mustn’t obstruct the police—Bray’s a friend of yours, by the way, isn’t he? I remember seeing him at Tankards—but beat the police on this crime, just this once, and the Mercury’s made for at least ten years—an authority on every and any case without another stroke of investigation.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Charles humbly. It didn’t sound very impressive, but it was all he could think of at the moment. Sitting in one room with the Chief, one felt as if there wasn’t really room for one, as if one was being overcrowded, pressed against the wall by his abundant personality.
&nb
sp; “What’s your own opinion of the case at this stage?” the Chief had asked.
“I have a theory so fantastic that at present I would rather file it at the back of my head and proceed along ordinary lines,” answered Charles. “Ordinary lines are these. Certain people could have done the murder. Who? Check up their alibis. It’s all part of a routine job. Certain people could have cut up the body and disposed of it. Who? Check up their alibis. If only one person is in both groups, he is the murderer.”
“But is he?” said the Chief. “I used to be quite good at Logic at Oxford, and I should say that the deduction only was logical, given that the murderer and the person who disposed of the body were one and the same person.”
“That’s so,” admitted Charles. “They may be different people. If so, God help us! The case is going to be so infernally tangled that it passes my comprehension how it will ever be solved. In that case, we shall be reduced to motive. Why kill Mrs. Budge, poor, harmless creature of a proprietress doing an efficient job in an efficient way?
“There may be no motive, of course. It may be the work of a maniac. If one applied William of Occam’s razor and refused to multiply entities, the hypothesis of a maniac would be the easiest way out. It would allow for every discrepancy, however irrational, because a maniac cannot be expected to be rational. But I distrust that theory on principle. I’m going to act on the assumption that the murderer’s very much cleverer than I am, and that nothing is done without a cause.
“The most disquieting feature of the case is that Budge sticks out about a mile as the murderer. I happen to know there was bad blood between the two. If he is the murderer, then the Mercury hasn’t a look in because everything will fall into the police’s lap like ripe apples. I am clinging to the belief that Budge is an intelligent fellow. He is quite capable of murdering somebody, but if he did, he would have a damn good alibi. But so far as I can see, he’s got no alibi at all.”
Crime in Kensington Page 8