‘Who are you talking with at the front door, Ellen?’ demanded a sharp voice from the interior of the hall.
‘Here’s Missus,’ said Ellen, somewhat unnecessarily.
She drew back, and Tommy found himself confronting a grey-haired, middle-aged woman, with frosty blue eyes imperfectly concealed by pince-nez, and a spare figure clad in black with bugle trimming.
‘Mrs Honeycott?’ said Tommy. ‘I came here to see Miss Glen.’
‘Mrs Honeycott gave him a sharp glance, then went on to Tuppence and took in every detail of her appearance.
‘Oh, you did, did you?’ she said. ‘Well, you’d better come inside.’
She led the way into the hall and along it into a room at the back of the house, facing on the garden. It was a fair-sized room, but looked smaller than it was, owing to the large amount of chairs and tables crowded into it. A big fire burned in the grate, and a chintz-covered sofa stood at one side of it. The wallpaper was a small grey stripe with a festoon of roses round the top. Quantities of engravings and oil paintings covered the walls.
It was a room almost impossible to associate with the expensive personality of Miss Gilda Glen.
‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Honeycott. ‘To begin with, you’ll excuse me if I say I don’t hold with the Roman Catholic religion. Never did I think to see a Roman Catholic priest in my house. But if Gilda’s gone over to the Scarlet Woman, it’s only what’s to be expected in a life like hers–and I dare say it might be worse. She mightn’t have any religion at all. I should think more of Roman Catholics if their priests were married–I always speak my mind. And to think of those convents–quantities of beautiful young girls shut up there, and no one knowing what becomes of them–well, it won’t bear thinking about.’
Mrs Honeycott came to a full stop, and drew a deep breath.
Without entering upon a defence of the celibacy of the priesthood or the other controversial points touched upon, Tommy went straight to the point.
‘I understand, Mrs Honeycott, that Miss Glen is in this house.’
‘She is. Mind you, I don’t approve. Marriage is marriage and your husband’s your husband. As you make your bed, so you must lie on it.’
‘I don’t quite understand –’ began Tommy, bewildered.
‘I thought as much. That’s the reason I brought you in here. You can go up to Gilda after I’ve spoken my mind. She came to me–after all these years, think of it!–and asked me to help her. Wanted me to see this man and persuade him to agree to a divorce. I told her straight out I’d have nothing whatever to do with it. Divorce is sinful. But I couldn’t refuse my own sister shelter in my house, could I now?’
‘Your sister?’ exclaimed Tommy.
‘Yes, Gilda’s my sister. Didn’t she tell you?’
Tommy stared at her openmouthed. The thing seemed fantastically impossible. Then he remembered that the angelic beauty of Gilda Glen had been in evidence for many years. He had been taken to see her act as quite a small boy. Yes, it was possible after all. But what a piquant contrast. So it was from this lower middle-class respectability that Gilda Glen had sprung. How well she had guarded her secret!
‘I am not yet quite clear,’ he said. ‘Your sister is married?’
‘Ran away to be married as a girl of seventeen,’ said Mrs Honeycott succinctly. ‘Some common fellow far below her in station. And our father a reverend. It was a disgrace. Then she left her husband and went on the stage. Play-acting! I’ve never been inside a theatre in my life. I hold no truck with wickedness. Now, after all these years, she wants to divorce the man. Means to marry some big wig, I suppose. But her husband’s standing firm–not to be bullied and not to be bribed–I admire him for it.’
‘What is his name?’ asked Tommy suddenly.
‘That’s an extraordinary thing now, but I can’t remember! It’s nearly twenty years ago, you know, since I heard it. My father forbade it to be mentioned. And I’ve refused to discuss the matter with Gilda. She knows what I think, and that’s enough for her.’
‘It wasn’t Reilly, was it?’
‘Might have been. I really can’t say. It’s gone clean out of my head.’
‘The man I mean was here just now.’
‘That man! I thought he was an escaped lunatic. I’d been in the kitchen giving orders to Ellen. I’d just got back into this room, and was wondering whether Gilda had come in yet (she has a latchkey), when I heard her. She hesitated a minute or two in the hall and then went straight upstairs. About three minutes later all this tremendous rat-tatting began. I went out into the hall, and just saw a man rushing upstairs. Then there was a sort of cry upstairs, and presently down he came again and rushed out like a madman. Pretty goings on.’
Tommy rose.
‘Mrs Honeycott, let us go upstairs at once. I am afraid –’
‘What of ?’
‘Afraid that you have no red wet paint in the house.’
Mrs Honeycott stared at him.
‘Of course I haven’t.’
‘That is what I feared,’ said Tommy gravely. ‘Please let us go to your sister’s room at once.’
Momentarily silenced, Mrs Honeycott led the way. They caught a glimpse of Ellen in the hall, backing hastily into one of the rooms.
Mrs Honeycott opened the first door at the top of the stairs. Tommy and Tuppence entered close behind her.
Suddenly she gave a gasp and fell back.
A motionless figure in black and ermine lay stretched on the sofa. The face was untouched, a beautiful soulless face like a mature child asleep. The wound was on the side of the head, a heavy blow with some blunt instrument had crushed in the skull. Blood was dripping slowly on to the floor, but the wound itself had long ceased to bleed…
Tommy examined the prostrate figure, his face very white.
‘So,’ he said at last, ‘he didn’t strangle her after all.’
‘What do you mean? Who?’ cried Mrs Honeycott. ‘Is she dead?’
‘Oh, yes, Mrs Honeycott, she’s dead. Murdered. The question is–by whom? Not that it is much of a question. Funny–for all his ranting words, I didn’t think the fellow had got it in him.’
He paused a minute, then turned to Tuppence with decision.
‘Will you go out and get a policeman, or ring up the police station from somewhere?’
Tuppence nodded. She too, was very white. Tommy led Mrs Honeycott downstairs again.
‘I don’t want there to be any mistake about this,’ he said. ‘Do you know exactly what time it was when your sister came in?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Mrs Honeycott. ‘Because I was just setting the clock on five minutes as I have to do every evening. It loses just five minutes a day. It was exactly eight minutes past six by my watch, and that never loses or gains a second.’
Tommy nodded. That agreed perfectly with the policeman’s story. He had seen the woman with the white furs go in at the gate, probably three minutes had elapsed before he and Tuppence had reached the same spot. He had glanced at his own watch then and had noted that it was just one minute after the time of their appointment.
There was just the faint chance that some one might have been waiting for Gilda Glen in the room upstairs. But if so, he must still be hiding in the house. No one but James Reilly had left it.
He ran upstairs and made a quick but efficient search of the premises. But there was no one concealed anywhere.
Then he spoke to Ellen. After breaking the news to her, and waiting for her first lamentations and invocations to the saints to have exhausted themselves, he asked a few questions.
Had any one else come to the house that afternoon asking for Miss Glen? No one whatsoever. Had she herself been upstairs at all that evening? Yes she’d gone up at six o’clock as usual to draw the curtains–or it might have been a few minutes after six. Anyway it was just before that wild fellow came breaking the knocker down. She’d run downstairs to answer the door. And him a black-hearted murderer all the time.
Tommy let
it go at that. But he still felt a curious pity for Reilly, and unwillingness to believe the worst of him. And yet there was no one else who could have murdered Gilda Glen. Mrs Honeycott and Ellen had been the only two people in the house.
He heard voices in the hall, and went out to find Tuppence and the policeman from the beat outside. The latter had produced a notebook, and a rather blunt pencil, which he licked surreptitiously. He went upstairs and surveyed the victim stolidly, merely remarking that if he was to touch anything the Inspector would give him beans. He listened to all Mrs Honeycott’s hysterical outbursts and confused explanations, and occasionally he wrote something down. His presence was calming and soothing.
Tommy finally got him alone for a minute or two on the steps outside ere he departed to telephone headquarters.
‘Look here,’ said Tommy, ‘you saw the deceased turning in at the gate, you say. Are you sure she was alone?’
‘Oh! she was alone all right. Nobody with her.’
‘And between that time and when you met us, nobody came out of the gate?’
‘Not a soul.’
‘You’d have seen them if they had?’
‘Of course I should. Nobody come out till that wild chap did.’
The majesty of the law moved portentously down the steps and paused by the white gatepost, which bore the imprint of a hand in red.
‘Kind of amateur he must have been,’ he said pityingly. ‘To leave a thing like that.’
Then he swung out into the road.
III
It was the day after the crime. Tommy and Tuppence were still at the Grand Hotel, but Tommy had thought it prudent to discard his clerical disguise.
James Reilly had been apprehended, and was in custody. His solicitor, Mr Marvell, had just finished a lengthy conversation with Tommy on the subject of the crime.
‘I never would have believed it of James Reilly,’ he said simply. ‘He’s always been a man of violent speech, but that’s all.’
Tommy nodded.
‘If you disperse energy in speech, it doesn’t leave you too much over for action. What I realise is that I shall be one of the principal witnesses against him. That conversation he had with me just before the crime was particularly damning. And, in spite of everything, I like the man, and if there was anyone else to suspect, I should believe him to be innocent. What’s his own story?’
The solicitor pursed up his lips.
‘He declares that he found her lying there dead. But that’s impossible, of course. He’s using the first lie that comes into his head.’
‘Because, if he happened to be speaking the truth, it would mean that the garrulous Mrs Honeycott committed the crime–and that is fantastic. Yes, he must have done it.’
‘The maid heard her cry out, remember.’
‘The maid–yes –’
Tommy was silent a moment. Then he said thoughtfully.
‘What credulous creatures we are, really. We believe evidence as though it were gospel truth. And what is it really? Only the impression conveyed to the mind by the senses–and suppose they’re the wrong impressions?’
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.
‘Oh! we all know that there are unreliable witnesses, witnesses who remember more and more as time goes on, with no real intention to deceive.’
‘I don’t mean only that. I mean all of us–we say things that aren’t really so, and never know that we’ve done so. For instance, both you and I, without doubt, have said some time or other, “There’s the post,” when what we really meant was that we’d heard a double knock and the rattle of the letter-box. Nine times out of ten we’d be right, and it would be the post, but just possibly the tenth time it might be only a little urchin playing a joke on us. See what I mean?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mr Marvell slowly. ‘But I don’t see what you’re driving at?’
‘Don’t you? I’m not so sure that I do myself. But I’m beginning to see. It’s like the stick, Tuppence. You remember? One end of it pointed one way–but the other end always points the opposite way. It depends whether you get hold of it by the right end. Doors open–but they also shut. People go upstairs, but they also go downstairs. Boxes shut, but they also open.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Tuppence.
‘It’s so ridiculously easy, really,’ said Tommy. ‘And yet it’s only just come to me. How do you know when a person’s come into the house. You hear the door open and bang to, and if you’re expecting any one to come in, you will be quite sure it is them. But it might just as easily be someone going out.’
‘But Miss Glen didn’t go out?’
‘No, I know she didn’t. But some one else did–the murderer.’
‘But how did she get in, then?’
‘She came in whilst Mrs Honeycott was in the kitchen talking to Ellen. They didn’t hear her. Mrs Honeycott went back to the drawing-room, wondered if her sister had come in and began to put the clock right, and then, as she thought, she heard her come in and go upstairs.’
‘Well, what about that? The footsteps going upstairs?’
‘That was Ellen, going up to draw the curtains. You remember, Mrs Honeycott said her sister paused before going up. That pause was just the time needed for Ellen to come out from the kitchen into the hall. She just missed seeing the murderer.’
‘But, Tommy,’ cried Tuppence. ‘The cry she gave?’
‘That was James Reilly. Didn’t you notice what a high-pitched voice he has? In moments of great emotion, men often squeal just like a woman.’
‘But the murderer? We’d have seen him?’
‘We did see him. We even stood talking to him. Do you remember the sudden way that policeman appeared? That was because he stepped out of the gate, just after the mist cleared from the road. It made us jump, don’t you remember? After all, though we never think of them as that, policemen are men just like any other men. They love and they hate. They marry…
‘I think Gilda Glen met her husband suddenly just outside that gate, and took him in with her to thrash the matter out. He hadn’t Reilly’s relief of violent words, remember. He just saw red–and he had his truncheon handy…’
Chapter 10
The Crackler
‘Tuppence,’ said Tommy. ‘We shall have to move into a much larger office.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Tuppence. ‘You mustn’t get swollen-headed and think you are a millionaire just because you solved two or three two penny halfpenny cases with the aid of the most amazing luck.’
‘What some call luck, others call skill.’
‘Of course, if you really think you are Sherlock Holmes, Thorndyke, McCarty and the Brothers Okewood all rolled into one, there is no more to be said. Personally I would much rather have luck on my side than all the skill in the world.’
‘Perhaps there is something in that,’ conceded Tommy. ‘All the same, Tuppence, we do need a larger office.’
‘Why?’
‘The classics,’ said Tommy. ‘We need several hundreds of yards of extra bookshelf if Edgar Wallace is to be properly represented.’
‘We haven’t had an Edgar Wallace case yet.’
‘I’m afraid we never shall,’ said Tommy. ‘If you notice he never does give the amateur sleuth much of a chance. It is all stern Scotland Yard kind of stuff–the real thing and no base counterfeit.’
Albert, the office boy, appeared at the door.
‘Inspector Marriot to see you,’ he announced.
‘The mystery man of Scotland Yard,’ murmured Tommy.
‘The busiest of the Busies,’ said Tuppence. ‘Or is it “Noses”? I always get mixed between Busies and Noses.’
The Inspector advanced upon them with a beaming smile of welcome.
‘Well, and how are things?’ he asked breezily. ‘None the worse for our little adventure the other day?’
‘Oh, rather not,’ said Tuppence. ‘Too, too marvellous, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, I don’t know that I would describe it exact
ly that way myself,’ said Marriot cautiously.
‘What has brought you here today, Marriot?’ asked Tommy. ‘Not just solicitude for our nervous systems, is it?’
‘No,’ said the Inspector. ‘It is work for the brilliant Mr Blunt.’
‘Ha!’ said Tommy. ‘Let me put my brilliant expression on.’
‘I have come to make you a proposition, Mr Beresford. What would you say to rounding up a really big gang?’
‘Is there such a thing?’ asked Tommy.
‘What do you mean, is there such a thing?’
‘I always thought that gangs were confined to fiction–like master crooks and super criminals.’
‘The master crook isn’t very common,’ agreed the Inspector. ‘But Lord bless you, sir, there’s any amount of gangs knocking about.’
‘I don’t know that I should be at my best dealing with a gang,’ said Tommy. ‘The amateur crime, the crime of quiet family life–that is where I flatter myself that I shine. Drama of strong domestic interest. That’s the thing–with Tuppence at hand to supply all those little feminine details which are so important, and so apt to be ignored by the denser male.’
His eloquence was arrested abruptly as Tuppence threw a cushion at him and requested him not to talk nonsense.
‘Will have your little bit of fun, won’t you, sir?’ said Inspector Marriot, smiling paternally at them both. ‘If you’ll not take offence at my saying so, it’s a pleasure to see two young people enjoying life as much as you two do.’
‘Do we enjoy life?’ said Tuppence, opening her eyes very wide. ‘I suppose we do. I’ve never thought about it before.’
‘To return to that gang you were talking about,’ said Tommy. ‘In spite of my extensive private practice–duchesses, millionaires, and all the best charwomen–I might, perhaps, condescend to look into the matter for you. I don’t like to see Scotland Yard at fault. You’ll have the Daily Mail after you before you know where you are.’
‘As I said before, you must have your bit of fun. Well, it’s like this.’ Again he hitched his chair forward. ‘There’s any amount of forged notes going about just now–hundreds of ’em! The amount of counterfeit Treasury notes in circulation would surprise you. Most artistic bit of work it is. Here’s one of ’em.’
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