A Case of Suicide in St. James's

by Clara Benson

  ‘Hallo, Freddy,’ said a voice beside him, and he turned to see Lois Westray, looking fresh and pretty, with a glass of champagne in her hand.

  ‘Lois,’ said Freddy. ‘How was Cowes?’

  ‘Oh, the usual,’ she replied. ‘There were lots of boats and one couldn’t see who was winning. The weather was decent, so I suppose one ought to be thankful for that at least, but I much prefer London.’

  They stood for a few moments, remarking on the weather and the success of the party, while Freddy deliberated inwardly. It had been agreed that Gertie should be the one to speak to Lois, but she had just button-holed Tom Chetwynd and was talking to him, and it was a pity to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. He made up his mind and decided to risk a direct accusation.

  ‘Lois,’ he said, ‘why did you lie about being on the balcony with Captain Dauncey on the night Douglas died?’

  She blinked at the sudden change of subject.

  ‘I saw you come down the stairs just before him,’ he explained. ‘If you weren’t there together, then you must have seen him—unless of course you didn’t see him because he wasn’t there.’

  He was almost sure this was not the case, but he wanted to be certain. Lois seemed to sag. She glanced around, then turned a bleak look on him.

  ‘I hoped you hadn’t seen me,’ she said. ‘But I really ought to stop trying to cover it up, as it’s done nobody any good at all. If you only knew the guilt I’ve been suffering since Doug died, at the thought that it might have been all my fault!’

  ‘Why do you think it was your fault?’

  She glanced around again.

  ‘I’d rather not be overheard,’ she said.

  They walked down to the bottom of the garden and sat on a bench overlooking the river, and Lois stared into her glass and began to talk.

  ‘Frank and I were married for a short while,’ she said. ‘It was just before the war, and I was very young. I was in the States, trying to make a name for myself in the theatre as an actress, and he was over there racing cars—you know he won the Vanderbilt Cup two years running? We met and married far too quickly. It was absurd, really. I loved him but he was quite impossible to live with, and so we divorced. Then I came back to England and married David and gave up trying to be an actress, and we were very happy for many years until he died. I didn’t see Frank at all during that time, but when I married Stanley we began running across one another frequently because of Frank’s work for the Nugent Corporation. I kept quiet about knowing Frank already because Stanley didn’t like him and he’s rather stuffy about divorce, and I’d never mentioned it because I thought of it as a mistake I’d made when I was too young to know better. But from the beginning Frank behaved as though we’d never been apart, even though he knew I didn’t want to be reminded about it. He just laughed when I told him not to come and see me, and kept on doing it anyway. Then one day he came and said he was flat broke and could I sub him? He was always terrible with money—that was one of the things we rowed about from the start after our marriage. He said he couldn’t make his way in the Air Force any more because they’d more or less told him to leave after some incident or other, and so he had to find other ways of supporting himself.’

  ‘They threw him out?’

  ‘Not exactly. I think it was by mutual agreement. It would have looked bad if they’d discharged him for misconduct when he was such a national hero and had won so many medals, but they didn’t want to keep him on, and so he departed quietly.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘According to him, nothing. He said there’d been some unfortunate accident here in England in which two of his fellow-officers died, and he’d been unjustly accused of causing their deaths by being drunk on duty. He denied it, of course. Still, the fact is he left the flying corps quietly and had trouble getting steady employment afterwards. That’s why he came to me. I didn’t have anything to give him and told him so, but he wouldn’t leave me alone.’ She sighed. ‘He always knew how to talk me round, and I thought it would stop him pestering me about the money, so I let him do it.’

  ‘Let him do what?’

  She turned her head away.

  ‘I let him into Doug’s office at the factory while Doug was away in Deauville,’ she said. ‘He said he’d heard there was some new wing design in the offing, and he wanted to see the plans. It was just curiosity, he said. He wanted to see how far ahead of Nugent Westray had got, since the Woodville Prize was coming up.’ She turned back to gaze at Freddy miserably. ‘It oughtn’t to have mattered—it wouldn’t have mattered, except—’

  ‘Except that Douglas had forgotten to register the patent on behalf of Westray,’ said Freddy.

  She nodded.

  ‘I would never have done it if I’d known. I don’t suppose you can imagine how dreadful I felt when Douglas came back and it turned out that Nugent had somehow registered an almost identical patent before him. There were all sorts of rows for weeks, and then Nugent won the Woodville Prize using the wing slots invented by Westray, and Stanley accused Douglas of passing on the design to Tatty, and there was a falling-out. And I, like the terrible coward I am, kept quiet all the way through,’ she finished bitterly. ‘It was all my fault. If I hadn’t let Frank see the plans then Douglas would have remembered to register the patent as soon as he got back from Deauville and Westray would have won the Woodville Prize.’

  Freddy just then remembered a remark Douglas had made on the night of the dance.

  ‘Did Douglas know you were the one to blame?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure how he found out. I think Frank probably let it slip when he’d been drinking. The two of them were friends of a sort. I’d told Frank not to mention that we’d once been married, but I was always frightened he’d say something.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but he must have told Douglas about what I’d done, because Doug came and confronted me about it. Of course I had to admit to it then, and explained why I’d done it, and that I didn’t want Stanley to know about my past.’ She blinked, as though trying to hold back tears. ‘He was a good boy, you know, Freddy. He was tremendously kind at heart. I was all set to go and confess to Stanley, but then Doug gave me that mournful, hang-dog look of his and said he was already in trouble for forgetting to register the patent, so he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and there was no need for his father to know. He didn’t admit to having done it, exactly, but he let Stanley think he had. The trouble was Stanley wouldn’t let it go, although I tried my best to smooth things over between them, knowing what Doug had done for me. But it was no use. And then it all ended between him and Tatty, and Tatty got engaged to Tom Chetwynd, and somehow Doug thought it was a good idea to get engaged to Gertie and then that ended too—’ she stopped, and sighed again.

  ‘And then Douglas was found dead and you thought you’d driven him to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice. ‘You can’t imagine how I’ve been turning the whole thing over and over in my mind ever since he died, and wishing more than anything that I’d simply confessed to Stanley about Frank as soon as I married him. After all, it’s nothing so very shameful these days, and I was very young. And now I have to face the probability that I caused my step-son’s suicide because of my own cowardice.’

  ‘I’m not certain you did, old thing,’ said Freddy.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been doing a little investigating since we met that day in Harrods, and I’m rather coming around to Tatty’s way of seeing things.’

  She looked up.

  ‘You mean it was murder after all?’

  ‘Yes, I think it was.’

  ‘But how? How is that possible? I thought Tatty was just feeling as guilty about him as I did, and that’s why she was so insistent on its being murder. But I never for a moment thought it was actually true. If someone killed him then how did they get into a locked room?’<
br />
  ‘How they got into it is easy enough—it’s how they got out of it that’s the difficult part. But I have a little idea about that.’

  ‘Is it terrible of me to hope against hope that it was murder?’ she said. ‘I suppose it is. But I can’t help my own selfishness—if I thought for a minute that Douglas’s death wasn’t my fault I should be so relieved!’

  ‘Then tell me the truth: did you see Dauncey up on the balcony that night?’

  ‘Yes, I did. He followed me up there and started bothering me. He wanted me to let him into Doug’s office again—or better still, Leslie Penbrigg’s workshop. I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn’t have a key to Leslie’s room, and I shouldn’t let him in even if I did, and the same went for Doug’s office. He wasn’t at all pleased at that—he started hinting that he’d tell Stanley about what I’d done, and that I ought to help him whenever he asked me, because of what we’d once been to each other. That made me angry. I said there was no use in his threatening me, since I’d been thinking of confessing to Stanley anyway, and if he really wanted the world to know that he was a thief, and that Nugent had won the Woodville Prize on the strength of a stolen design, then he was welcome to put an advertisement in the Times if he liked. That shut him up.’

  ‘Were you on the balcony with him all the time? I mean, he didn’t jimmy open the window while your back was turned and disappear for a minute or two?’

  ‘No, of course not. We talked, then I came down the stairs, and he came down shortly afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, it was too soon afterwards for him to have done it that way. Does Lord Browncliffe know what Dauncey’s been up to, by the way? Does he know the wing slot design was stolen?’

  ‘I don’t believe he does. I don’t think he knows half of what goes on in his own company, as a matter of fact. He likes to wave his hand and have things done for him, but doesn’t want to bother about the details. If one of his employees showed him a new invention that was likely to win a prize it wouldn’t occur to him to look into it too closely.’

  ‘I see,’ said Freddy. He thought for a moment. ‘Tatty told me that Dauncey and Douglas were friends at one time, but then fell out around the time the Woodville Prize was awarded. I rather wonder whether you mightn’t have been the reason.’

  ‘Perhaps I was. Doug wasn’t the secretive sort. I think having to keep quiet about me sat badly with him, and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d decided to go and vent his feelings to Frank’s face.’

  ‘If he did, don’t you think that’s a good enough reason for murder?’

  Lois stared.

  ‘You mean Frank?’

  ‘Yes. If he thought he was about to be exposed, don’t you think he might have decided to put Douglas out of the way?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know. This all happened last year. If Frank was going to do it, wouldn’t he have done it at the time?’

  ‘He might. Or he might have assumed he was safe until the night of the dance, when Douglas had too much to drink and started causing trouble. What if Douglas threatened Dauncey that evening? He was drunk enough to have announced what he knew to the world, and Dauncey certainly wouldn’t have wanted that. What if he decided to put Douglas out of the way to ensure his silence once and for all?’

  ‘Why, I—’ she stopped. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Freddy. ‘That’s the trouble.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  For the next hour, Freddy did his social duty. He paid his compliments to the hostess, flattered Sir Thomas, and passed the time with Tom and Tatty, who were wandering around the garden together wearing fixed smiles that were not altogether convincing. After that he mingled with the other guests, discussing politics, flirting, or making fatuous jokes as required. Then, finding himself momentarily bereft of company, he took a stroll down to a little cluster of bushes at the bottom of the garden, where he found Leslie Penbrigg and Alida Westray standing together in halting conversation. Penbrigg was pink in the face, and his expression reminded Freddy of nothing so much as a stupefied sheep, while Alida, also blushing a little, seemed to be doing her best to encourage him. It was hardly Romeo and Juliet, but Freddy considered it a step forward that Penbrigg had made it as far as talking to her, and decided to leave them alone. At length he was accosted by Gertie.

  ‘What a bore!’ she said. ‘I’ve been talking to people for hours and nobody has anything entertaining to say. Tell me something interesting, but I warn you, if you so much as mention the weather I shall scream. At last count I’ve agreed forty-three times that it’s a beautiful day.’

  ‘Oh, you want something interesting, do you? Very well, what about this: Lois Westray used to be married to Captain Dauncey and passed on the Westray wing slot design to him.’

  If he had been hoping to create a sensation with this piece of news he was not disappointed. Gertie gaped at him, dumbfounded.

  ‘No!’ she said, once she had found her voice. ‘Come on then, my boy, dish it up!’

  Freddy told her what Lois had said and she listened, open-mouthed.

  ‘Well!’ she said at last. ‘There’s another motive for murder if ever there was one! Doug must have threatened to expose Dauncey for stealing the wing slot plans.’

  ‘It’s certainly possible,’ agreed Freddy, ‘although we still have no evidence of any of this. At any rate, it’s something we didn’t know before. All we have to do now is to work out how—or if—it fits into the question.’

  ‘Of course it fits in. Give me a cigarette, will you? Not here—Mother doesn’t approve. Let’s go somewhere and think it out in private.’

  They left the garden by the path along the river, and walked along the bank a little way together, until they reached a secluded, shady spot close to a wooden landing-stage. Gertie threw herself down under a tree.

  ‘Let’s stay here and look at the clues one by one,’ she said.

  But the day and the scenery were too pleasant to be thinking about murder; moreover, the weather and the champagne were having a soporific effect, so instead they sat and smoked in a companionable silence. Gertie leaned back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, while Freddy idly watched a kingfisher which was perched on a low-hanging branch by the water, preparing to dive. After a few minutes he saw coming along the path towards them a girl, walking slowly, her eyes turned down towards the ground. Freddy’s attention was caught by her, firstly because even from that distance it was clear that she was very pretty; and secondly because she was wearing a coat which was far too heavy for the weather. She had not seen them, and as he watched he saw that she was behaving somewhat oddly. Her eyes scanned the path and the river bank, and occasionally she would stoop and pick up a stone. By the landing-stage was a patch of gravel, and she stopped here and picked up several large stones and put them in her pocket. Freddy was struck by her fixed gaze and her sense of purpose.

  ‘Queer,’ he said to himself.

  ‘If there were any boats around here one might go out on the river,’ remarked Gertie, without opening her eyes.

  Freddy was still watching the girl. She had by now filled her pockets with stones and was making her way along to the little landing-stage. She stepped onto it and walked along to the end. At last Freddy understood what she was about to do, and stood up.

  ‘Hi!’ he shouted, but it was too late, for the girl had jumped off the landing-stage without a second’s hesitation. Gertie opened her eyes at his shout, and was just in time to see the girl disappear under the water. She gasped. Freddy saw there was no time to lose and sprang into action. He dashed down to the edge of the river, closely followed by Gertie, threw off his jacket and shoes, and hurled himself off the jetty after the girl. It was not the most elegant dive, and the freezing water was a shock after the heat of the day, but he did not stop to think about those things, and instead swam two strong strokes, took a deep breath and went under, feeling the water soak heavily into his shirt and t
rousers, impeding his movement. It was difficult to see anything because of the mud which had been churned up by the disturbance, but he dived towards where he thought the girl might be, and as luck would have it, felt his hand knock against something soft almost immediately. He clutched at her arm, and she struggled a little, but he did not hesitate. The overcoat with the stones in was weighing her down, but there was no time to try and pull it off her, so he took hold of her under the arms and kicked upwards as hard as he could. It seemed to take an age, and his lungs felt as though they were about to explode, but just as he thought he would have to take a breath they burst free of the surface. Freddy took in a huge gasp of air, then began to drag her towards the jetty with difficulty, for she was a dead weight in his arms. Gertie was leaning over the edge of the landing-stage, holding her hands out to help, and between them they managed to get the girl out of the water and carry her across to the grass. She was coughing and gasping, but thanks to Freddy’s quick thinking she had not been under the water more than half a minute, and it was soon evident that she had come to no great harm, so Gertie ran off to get some blankets. At last the coughing subsided, and the girl sat quietly, getting her breath back. Her dark hair was plastered to her head, and her large brown eyes were glaring at Freddy with no sign of gratitude.

  ‘You beast!’ she said furiously, as soon as she could speak. ‘I wanted to do it in peace and quiet while everybody was at the party, and now the story will be all over the place!’

  ‘Well, I was hardly going to stand there and watch you drown, was I?’ said Freddy. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right,’ she snapped. ‘Why do you think I threw myself in?’

  She burst into tears, and he regarded her awkwardly. Suicidal women did not figure largely in his experience, and he had no idea what to do next, except make sure she did not try to jump in the river again. He retreated a few feet away and tried to wring out his clothes as best he could, although he feared they were ruined, then spread out his arms to allow the sun to dry him. Eventually, Gertie returned with Tom and Tatty, much to his relief. Tatty was carrying a picnic blanket. The girl’s sobs had subsided, but as the others approached they started up again.