“Crime has always interested me,” commented the Chief. “I would like to tell you, for what it is worth, a theory of mine formed as a result of my study. I think that the criminal betrays himself not in the carefully planned deed itself, when action cools his nerve and clears his brain, but afterwards when anxiety—perhaps even remorse—conjures up phantoms that plague him. The callow criminal returns anxiously to the scene of the murder: in more subtle brains the unrest takes the form of more work put into covering up the tracks—a consolidation of the alibi, an elimination of witnesses who might be hostile. Therefore if the police’s preliminary investigation reveals nothing, wait for the false step subsequently that will put you on the trail.”
The Chief’s voice died away. Sharp and clear, the voices of newsboys with the latest evening edition rose from the street. Traffic drifted soundlessly down the distant river, and the setting sun conjured the Crystal Palace into topaz.
III
“I’ve seen the papers, of course,” said Mr. Tarr, reaching out for a box of cigarettes, and then changing his mind and unearthing a cigar. “Naturally I was expecting you.”
Messrs. Tarr, Waters & Tarr of Bedford Row were not the cobwebbed attorneys of fiction. Bray found himself in offices whose rubber flooring and wealth of new oak panelling suggested a bank, and the rosy-gilled, prosperous-looking solicitor who saw him was very much the man of the world. Perhaps a little too consciously so, but it was a very convincing performance.
“I take it you are Mrs. Budge’s family solicitor?” suggested Bray.
“Not quite the family solicitor of legend,” smiled the lawyer. “Mrs. Budge was one of our most valued clients, but we know extremely little about her personal affairs, and nothing of her previous history before she walked into our office five years ago.”
“She was not introduced to you?” queried Bray.
“No,” replied Tarr. He removed his pince-nez and polished them abstractedly. He appeared to be measuring his words. “As a firm we have traditions, but we pride ourselves, Inspector, on being in touch with the times. The day of the aristocracy has passed. We poor professional devils must bow the knee to plutocracy.” (Bray visioned him, pink and embarrassed, bowing the knee.) “By that standard Mrs. Budge needed neither references nor introductions.”
“Evidently he had suspicions about the good lady,” thought the Inspector. Aloud he said, “That suggests a new line of thought. What approximately would Mrs. Budge be worth?”
Tarr hesitated. “Naturally I am not prepared to name any definite figure. I could, I think, state a minimum, but the estate may have debts of which I know nothing. I should say Mrs. Budge would cut up for—h’m, perhaps the phrase is rather unfortunate—I should say the estate could not conceivably be less than £50,000—nearer £100,000.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Bray. “This is far beyond what one could imagine. How was this fortune made?”
“I have never seen the Garden Hotel,” answered the lawyer, surprised at the policeman’s surprise, “but it was evidently a very paying proposition. I suppose it was some great white-tiled barn of a place, and I know both my client and her husband lived very simply.”
“The Garden Hotel is in effect a small Kensington boarding-house,” retorted Bray. “At the moment it has twelve guests, and I should say its maximum capacity is twenty.”
It was Tarr’s turn to be surprised. “Good gracious,” he said, “I find this almost incredible. Mrs. Budge was able to put by over £10,000 a year, and I have always assumed it was the profit from the hotel.”
“Well, you can take it quite definitely that it isn’t,” retorted Bray, and was pleased to see the lawyer look disturbed. “How can I find out the source of this profit?”
“I suggest you see Vernon, her bank manager, who will give you every help he can. I warn you, however, that he may not be able to help you, since I know that, like myself, he is under the impression that Mrs. Budge’s money was all made from the Garden Hotel.”
“I will get Samuel to go over and see him,” said Bray. “He is an experienced accountant, and I back him to find out where every penny of Mrs. Budge’s money emanates from. Meanwhile I should like to ask you a question. Have you any reason to believe that Mrs. Budge had any enemies?”
The lawyer thought a moment. “Until the day before her murder I should have said ‘No,’” he replied. “An event took place on that day which leads me to modify my reply as far as to say that Mrs. Budge may conceivably have had some reason for fear.”
The detective was all attention.
“Mrs. Budge came into my office and said that she wished to execute a will, as she did not wish to die intestate and leave her husband unprovided for. While agreeing with her in principle, I pointed out that in any event, should she die intestate, her husband would inherit, as she was without issue. She insisted on a will being made there and then, in which she devised all her property, real and personal, to her husband. The original phrasing of my pencilled draft was ‘to my husband, George Edward Budge,’ but she insisted on crossing out the words ‘my husband.’” The lawyer paused as if expecting a comment.
“From which one might deduce that in the eyes of the law, George Edward Budge would be a more accurate description than ‘my husband.’”
“Exactly,” said the lawyer, pleased that his point had been taken without his committing himself. “Naturally, I made no comment, since such a state of affairs is not uncommon in one’s practice. Now, when she had signed the will and seen it witnessed, she made a remark which, in the light of after events, seems profoundly significant. She handed me an envelope, sealed, with these words. I made a note immediately after she left so that I should not forget the exact phrasing.”
The lawyer rummaged in his papers while Bray sat back with the joyful feeling of a hound joining in a full cry on a perfect scent. Tarr handed a slip of paper over to Bray. On it was written:
“If any suspicious circumstances should surround Mrs. Budge’s death, she would like this envelope to be handed to the police. If I were perfectly satisfied the death was natural, it is to be destroyed without being opened.”
Mr. Tarr handed the sealed envelope to the detective. “I suggest that as her legal adviser it should be opened in my presence,” he said, in a professional voice from which he was unable to eliminate all traces of curiosity.
Bray opened the envelope and read it. There was a long silence.
The lawyer fingered the wings of his collar.
Bray looked up and said gravely: “This is pretty nearly a death warrant.”
Tarr literally grabbed the document. The last communication of Mrs. Budge was brief and to the point.
“The will that I have made this day in favour of George Edward Budge was made as a result of threats of violence from him, and not of my own free will. He is not my husband in the eyes of the law, and I hereby declare that any bequest in his favour was made wholly under duress.
“LOUISA DEERING,
“(known as LOUISA BUDGE).”
Chapter Nine
Budge Versus Bray: First Round
I
“WHAT about that chat we were going to have?” Charles asked Bray. “And are there going to be any developments to give me a really good story to-day?”
Bray had met Charles on his return to the hotel from the lawyer’s.
“To be perfectly candid,” answered Bray, “and this is not for publication, I shall probably make an arrest to-day.”
Charles looked astonished. “Quick work,” he acknowledged. “Poor old Budge!”
A police detective should be immune to minor human failings, but Bray was distinctly irritated by the fact that Charles had reached a right conclusion so effortlessly, even if he had jumped to it.
“Yes, as a matter of fact it is Budge,” he admitted. “Was it a guess?”
“Mainly guess-work,” acknowledged Charles. “Budge was the obvious murderer from the point of view of opportunity. Of course, he did not d
o it. Can you imagine a laundry proprietor neatly dismembering a body, when he has only got to put it in one of his machines to tear it to unrecognizable pieces, judging by the condition in which my shirts return from the wash?”
Bray laughed. “I really believe those are the sort of grounds on which you would condemn or acquit a man, Charles,” he said, with a hint of patronage. “Unfortunately we have to work on more commonplace lines at the Yard. Budge not only had the opportunity, he had the motive, and even if we have to tear the hotel to bits we’ll find evidence to prove he did the dismemberment.”
Charles leaned back and regarded Bray severely through his eyeglass. “I believe you are suspecting poor old Budge simply because you have at last found he threatened to murder his wife if she did not make a will in his favour.”
For a moment Bray goggled. He looked at Charles with a face eloquent of suspicion. “How the devil did you find that out?” he asked.
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” he said. “I deduced it as exactly the type of motive which would make the Yard believe Budge was the murderer.”
“Bah!” growled Bray. “How did you find out?”
Charles relented and told him of the conversation he had overheard on his first visit to the Garden Hotel.
“There you are,” said the detective triumphantly. “You’ll have to tell that in the witness-box before you are much older.”
“Well, I don’t believe our poor old lay reader did it for one moment,” Charles said. “And if you can spare the time, I would like to unfold a theory of my own as to a certain gentleman who could tell you a good deal more than he has done about this affair.”
“Sorry, I can’t spare any time—for your theories,” retorted Bray rudely. “I’m going to have a little talk with Budge. But for old times’ sake, and on condition you make no use of what you hear without my permission and because you’re going to be a witness for the prosecution, you can come with me when I interview Budge.”
“All right,” said Charles, “but it amazes me to see still, after all the detective novels that have been written, how little Scotland Yard heeds the amateur whose brilliant deductions are so inevitably right.” And Charles followed with exaggerated dejection in Bray’s wake.
On the way Bray met Billings, who drew Bray aside.
“Come and look at the laundry basket in Budge’s room,” he said.
Bray’s eyes brightened with interest.
Billings opened the basket with the air of a conjurer, and Charles was disappointed to find it empty. The two policeman bent over it eagerly while Billings pointed out in turn the places from which had been taken a human hair and a couple of strands of white thread which now were enclosed in marked transparent envelopes.
“The hair is identical in texture and colour with Mrs. Budge’s,” he said, his big fingers, surprisingly deft, emphasizing his points. “The threads match the fabric of her nightdress, and I have, I think, found the place from which they were torn. On the face of it, it seems certain that the body was thrust into this basket for a time. It must have been a tight fit, and there are certain deformations—here, for instance, and here—which support the theory.”
Bray smiled irritatingly at Charles. “Better and better,” he said. His face clouded for a moment. “If the body was placed in here immediately, it seems almost incredible that Noakes should have overlooked it when he searched the room immediately afterwards.”
“Once he had it in the basket,” said Charles helpfully, “he could move it about fairly quickly. Probably hid it in another room while the Sergeant was searching this room, and then moved it back when there was an opportunity or when the other room was due to be searched—a grim sort of version of a nursery game called hunt the slipper.”
Bray thought for a moment, thinking back along the time-table so industriously prepared by Noakes. “Yes, that’s possible,” he conceded, “and it would enable him in a large measure to choose the time and place for the dismemberment of the body. Have you discovered anything else, Billings?” he added.
“Not yet, Inspector,” the man replied. “But it is a fairly slow business in a show as big as this hotel.”
“Well, carry on then and report progress.”
Billings saluted and went.
“It’s been my experience,” remarked Bray, “that when one has once started to get one’s line on the culprit things start to happen, and you know by the way clues multiply one is on the right trail. If we could only get a line on the dismemberment connecting it with Budge, I should have the case in my pocket.”
“Come, come, you’re losing faith,” said Charles. “Square your shoulders, remember your duty, forget the Judges’ rules, and pile into Budge.”
II
“I suppose I am the only resident in the Garden Hotel who hasn’t a theory about the murderer,” complained Miss Sanctuary to Viola. “Nearly everyone has come up to me at one time or other and unfolded their pet hypothesis with the hope of getting me to support them.” She sighed. “And all I can do is to say that I can’t help them at all, that I can only remember one little unimportant thing and I have already told that to the police.”
Miss Sanctuary was sitting in the little room on the ground floor which, although a common room, had been accepted as her special retreat. Viola’s imagination boggled at the square yardage of knitting which had been turned out in the room since her arrival. The steady click of Miss Sanctuary’s needles—or was it the kind face with the piercing eyes—must have had some restful quality, for Viola was not the first to drift into that room and talk with its grey-haired occupant. Viola felt herself a little closer to sanity now that she had done so. She had rushed out of the lounge, in the middle of a heated discussion on the Coptic rite between Blood and Eppoliki, with a strong desire to scream. She felt better now.
“The most disappointing part of the whole affair,” she said, “is that the five people who are all likely candidates for the position of murderer have such perfect alibis. Eppoliki, for instance, the sinister Oriental with a past, Mrs. Walton, so unexpected a murderer that the wary detective would be bound to suspect her; and, of course, Charles and myself, even more suspicious, perhaps, than Mrs. Walton.”
“I’m glad you read detective stories, my dear,” commented Miss Sanctuary. “So do I. And I should say that even your alibi isn’t perfect. We can’t prove that the murder was done at the time of your bridge game, or that the person who assaulted me was the murderer. You know at one time I had the fantastic idea that it was Mrs. Budge herself who attacked me.”
“What a priceless idea!” exclaimed Viola. “I really believe that you would make a splendid detective if you would only try. Think of the advantage of sitting here and having everyone come and tell you their secrets.”
Miss Sanctuary smiled. “Perhaps I shall offer to help the police if they appear to be stuck. Meanwhile I’ll give you a little information. I think the police are going to arrest poor Mr. Budge. I happen to know that things look rather black against him, and there was a blood-thirsty gleam in Inspector Bray’s eye when he looked in here just now.”
“Well, I’m sure they’re wrong,” declared Viola. “Poor little man! I hope he gets off.”
“Scotland Yard never makes a mistake,” asserted Miss Sanctuary positively; but perhaps there was a twinkle in her eye.
III
The two walked into the now famous sitting-room (Charles’s minute description in the Mercury was familiar to every Mercury reader) in the Budges’ suite. Budge was sitting at a table going through a pile of correspondence and gazing with disapproval at the two burly members of the Force who were crawling about the bedroom floor and taking numberless and apparently pointless measurements of the distance of this article from that and their respective heights.
“Sorry if I haven’t been very helpful, Inspector,” said the unwitting quarry of the law, leaning back in his swivel chair. “Everything has been at sixes and sevens since this shocking affair, and I have had my han
ds full keeping the hotel going.”
“Well, perhaps you can spare some of your time now,” answered the Inspector coldly, planking down his chair in the window with so obvious a gesture that the other, unless he were extremely dense, could not fail to see that he was to be the object of close scrutiny during the conversation.
“Fire away,” Budge said. His tone was noncommittal and his face expressionless, but Charles saw his Adam’s apple bob twice above his collar, as patent a signal of distress as if he had licked his lips.
“Matters have come to the knowledge of the police, Mr. Budge,” began Bray portentously, “which refer to a time prior to the death of your wife. You will, no doubt, realize well enough that you need make no statement which will incriminate yourself, but I am going to ask you if you can throw light on this subject.”
While Bray was speaking, with a careful choice of words, the colour slowly drained from the man’s face, leaving it the colour of dry parchment. His little eyes darted round the room, and he paused for a full minute before he spoke.
When at last the words came, the voice was hoarse with fear but the tone was the tone of resignation. “I knew it would come out sooner or later,” he said. “I’d best make a clean breast of it.”
Here Bray made an error, pardonable enough in the circumstances, but one for which he kicked himself a thousand times in after days. “Never prompt a confession” was a rule in which, as a keen amateur psychologist, he had a profound belief. But now he broke it.
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