by Cyril Hare
“Damn you! Why shouldn’t I?”
“Just as you please. I thought perhaps you might be afraid of someone recognizing you—from having seen you at the funeral, of course. And talking of recognition, it is a bit awkward when you are recognized when you’re out on the loose, isn’t it, Martin?”
Martin did not answer, except by putting his foot down more firmly on the accelerator. The car was travelling at its highest speed now, and in the roar of the air past the wind-screen Stephen had to raise his voice to be heard.
“Of course, it would depend on who recognized you, I suppose,” he went on. “For a man who is wanting to get married I should think his prospective father-in-law is about the worst person to run into. Especially if it’s a father-in-law who doesn’t like him in any case.”
Stephen put his mouth very close to Martin’s ear so that there was no chance of a word being lost. His voice had suddenly dropped entirely the ironic tone which it had held until then.
“You wanted Anne, and you knew your chances of getting her were absolutely gone if he saw you there,” he said. “You wanted money, and you thought he had plenty to leave. You knew that life in our family was hell so long as he was alive, anyway. So you took your chance then, you murdering swine! And it’s no good your thinking you can serve me the same way you did him. I’m ready for you—there’s a gun in my pocket and if you don’t do just what I tell you—Martin!” His voice rose to a scream as his gaze shifted momentarily to the road ahead. “Look out, for God’s sake!”
But Martin was past all heeding. Red-faced, stammering, his wide eyes grotesquely magnified by his thick glasses, he turned to face his accuser. The car swung dangerously on to the offside of the road as it reached a sharp left-hand bend. The heavy lorry which was coming down the steep eastern slope of Pendlebury Hill had no chance whatever of avoiding it. It crashed into the side of the little car and rolled it completely over, a tangled heap of steel and glass.
* * *
Mallett’s car had left New Scotland Yard at about the same time that Martin’s had started from Hampstead. It had to traverse the whole of Central London before getting on to the open road and consequently, in spite of its superior speed, it was some twenty minutes later that it arrived on the scene of the accident. A police constable was taking particulars from the white-faced lorry driver and an ambulance was drawn up by the roadside. As Mallett got out of his car, the first-aid men were lifting two limp bodies on to stretchers. One of them was groaning feebly and turning his heavily bandaged head from side to side. The other was ominously still. The inspector looked at them. His face expressed neither sympathy nor horror, only a mild surprise. He said a word to the driver of the ambulance and went back to his car.
“We’ll go on to Pendlebury Old Hall,” he said to his driver.
“There’s nothing we can do here, I suppose, sir?”
“Nothing at all. It’s an unfortunate business, but—perhaps it simplifies things on the whole.”
At the hotel he asked for the manager. The man was inclined to be unhelpful at first, but under Mallett’s gentle pressure soon became amenable enough. He looked with interest at the photograph which the inspector showed him but shook his head doubtfully.
“I think so, but I couldn’t be sure,” he said. “Not to swear to, I mean. I dare say some of my staff could, though. Shall I ask Miss Carter?”
“Would you know him again if you saw him?”
“Oh, yes, I’m certain of that. A photograph’s one thing but the living face is another.”
“Then if you don’t mind coming along in my car, we needn’t bother Miss Carter. I’m not so sure about the living face, though,” Mallett added, sardonically.
His premonition was right. At the hospital they were directed not to the accident ward but to the mortuary. They were conducted there by an attendant, who was as cheerful as only those whose daily business is with death and disfigurement can be.
He whistled jauntily as they walked along the echoing corridor, breaking off to observe:
“Funny things, these car crashes! Here’s this chap, multiple injuries all over the place. Simply smashed to bits. He might just as well have stopped a charge of H.E. And the other fellow sitting beside him gets away with a couple of scalp wounds and concussion. Dirty work, isn’t it? Well, here we are! You’ll find his face is O.K. luckily. It’s about the only thing that is.”
He drew aside the sheet that covered the face of the dead man. The hotel manager craned forward to see. Mallett stood in the background, anxious neither by word nor sign to influence him in any way. In silence they left the mortuary and when they were outside, Mallett said, “Well?”
“That’s him, all right,” was the answer.
Confident though he had been, the inspector breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank you for your help,” he said. “And now I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”
“Am I likely to hear any more of this matter?” the manager asked him, as he deposited him at his door. “It’s very bad for business, you know.”
“You won’t ever be troubled with it again,” was the confident reply.
“I’m very glad to hear that. But won’t you stay to lunch as my guest, Inspector?”
“No, thank you,” replied Mallett with great emphasis.
Chapter Twenty-one
Mallett Sums Up
Monday, September 4th
Mallett was about to begin his report on the Dickinson case when the house-telephone rang.
“There’s a Mr. Dedman wants to see you,” he was told. “He says it is urgent.”
The inspector sighed. The file labelled “Re Dickinson,” now bulging with papers, yawned balefully at him. He was anxious to be rid of it once for all, and he grudged any interruption.
“Ask him if he’ll kindly come back tomorrow,” he said. “I’m very busy just now.”
There was a pause and then the voice said: “The gentleman says he must see you this morning, sir. Tomorrow will be too late. He is most insistent.” Then, in an undertone, “He seems perfectly genuine, sir.”
“Very well,” said Mallett, in a resigned tone. “Tell him to come up.”
A moment or two later Mr. Dedman bounced, rather than walked, into the room. He wasted no time in greetings but came straight to the point.
“I’m a busy man, Inspector,” he said, “and so, I have no doubt, are you. I shouldn’t be here if it wasn’t vitally necessary in my clients’ interests. My firm are the solicitors to the estate of the late Mr. Leonard Dickinson. The deceased had insured his life for the sum of—”
“Oh, Mr. Dedman, but I know all about that,” Mallett murmured.
“You do? Good! Then I needn’t waste any time explaining. The point is, that today is the last day of which I can secure any payment from the Company on the basis of suicide. I understand that you have been investigating this case. All I want from you is a clear indication—murder or suicide—which?”
“Oh,” said Mallett quietly. “Murder, undoubtedly.”
“Excellent! I’m much obliged to you. You shall hear from us if litigation proves necessary.” And Mr. Dedman shot out of his chair and made for the door.
“Good Heavens!” said the inspector in astonishment. “Do you really mean to tell me that you don’t want to hear any more? Aren’t you interested to know who murdered your client?”
“Naturally I am, but that can wait. I’m a solicitor, not a policeman. Besides, they told me downstairs that you were extremely busy.”
“I assure you, they told you the truth. All the same, in your own interests, I should advise you to make yourself acquainted with all the facts of the case before you go to see the Insurance Company. There is a little point of law which you might like to consider first.”
“A point of law?” echoed Mr. Dedman, sitting down again.
“Precisely. Do you mind telling me, how did the late Mr. Leonard Dickinson dispose of his estate?”
“One half to his
widow for life, with remainder to the children in equal shares, the other half divided between the children absolutely.”
“And of that estate the insurance moneys form a part?”
“Of course—by far the larger part.”
“Is there not a rule of law, Mr. Dedman, that a murderer is not allowed to profit by the will of his victim?”
Mr. Dedman stared at the inspector silent and open-mouthed. His brisk and business-like manner seemed suddenly deflated.
“Inspector,” he said at last, “who murdered my client?”
“His son, Stephen.”
“Good God!” said Mr. Dedman, and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “Good God!” he repeated. “But—but—Are you serious about this, Inspector?”
“Perfectly serious.”
“But I tell you, this doesn’t make sense! Stephen! Why it was he who was so insistent all along that—”
“That his father had been murdered? Exactly. It is the only case in my experience where a murderer found himself in the position of having to prove that the crime had been committed, in order to attain the result for which he had committed it.”
Mr. Dedman looked at his watch, replaced it in his pocket, and then crossed his legs and settled back in his chair.
“Please tell me all about it,” he requested, in tones that were for him positively humble.
Mallett was only too glad to comply. If he had a weakness, it was that he loved an audience. The circumstances of the present case had compelled him to work entirely alone, and he was pleased with the opportunity. Preparing a written report was always irksome to him, but he thoroughly enjoyed an exposition by word of mouth.
“Stephen Dickinson,” he began, “was an inveterate gambler on the Stock Exchange. He was at all material times, as you lawyers say, hopelessly in debt. He was thoroughly unprincipled, like many gamblers, except, oddly enough, where sex was concerned. I haven’t been able to trace that he ever had anything to do with women. In that respect, he seems to have been positively puritan. He was, of course, extremely conceited and entirely selfish. I have yet to meet a murderer who wasn’t. In particular, he disliked and despised his father, and having met the old gentleman myself, I can believe that he must have been an extremely tiresome person to live with.”
Dedman nodded his emphatic agreement.
“About the middle of the summer,” the inspector proceeded, “Stephen, whose financial position began to be really difficult, appears to have first formed the idea of murdering his father. He was, of course, well aware of the existence of the insurance policy which had been taken out after the death of Mr. Arthur Dickinson. He was also familiar with his father’s habit of taking Medinal tablets under medical advice.”
“How do you fix the date?” Mr. Dedman asked.
“It was about this time, as I learned from the family doctor whom I saw the other day, that the father purported to write to the doctor suggesting that as an experiment he should try taking the drug in powder form. The doctor duly prescribed, and shortly afterwards received a letter saying that the powder did not suit the father, and that he would prefer to continue with the tablets. Both letters were, of course, forgeries, and the son intercepted the prescription and so secured the means of carrying out his design.
“Having done this, he waited until his father went on his annual walking tour before putting his plan into execution. There may have been some reason against attempting the murder in his own home. Perhaps he had some sentimental feeling about it. I don’t know. In any case, he decided that it should be done at Pendlebury Old Hall Hotel, where he knew that his father, a creature of habit if ever there was one, would infallibly end his holiday. He was in this difficulty, however, that he did not know precisely on what day his father would arrive there. At the same time, he had to make provision for as conclusive an alibi as possible.
“He got over it in this way: He arranged to go to Switzerland with his sister for the holidays and then at the last moment invented some excuse for not joining her at the time arranged. (We have been to some trouble over the week end to find out from the hotel details as to how his room was cancelled at short notice.) Then he went to stay at Pendlebury until such time as his father should come along. He took the name of Stewart Davitt—the initials were the same as his own, naturally enough, so that he should not be given away by his luggage, which, no doubt, was marked ‘S.D.’ more or less prominently.”
“Talking of initials,” said Mr. Dedman, “have you observed—”
“I shall come to that presently,” said Mallett. He went on: “He gave an address in Hawk Street, which, I have since ascertained, is in fact a lodging-house and was until the other day the address of a clerk in the office of the stockbrokers through whom he carried on his speculations. He was on close terms of acquaintance with this young man, who has, by the way, since been dismissed by his employers for gambling in shares on his own account. At the hotel, he selected the room next to the one which he knew his father always occupied. (I expect he was familiar, to the point of boredom, with every detail of the old man’s life at his beloved Pendlebury.) He made an excuse for keeping out of sight of all the other residents in the hotel, and bided his time.
“In due course, Mr. Dickinson came to the hotel. As he always did, he ordered a cup of tea to be sent up to his room. As he always did, when it arrived, he told the maid to leave it outside until he was ready for it. All that the son had to do was to slip out of the room adjoining, empty his packet of Medinal powder into the tea-pot (the stuff dissolves quite quickly and is almost tasteless, I am told) and slip back again. The father came out, took in the tray, added his usual dose to the already poisoned tea and went to sleep, never to wake up again. Early next morning, having made his arrangements overnight, Stephen Dickinson left the hotel, caught the express to London, took the eight o’clock aeroplane for Zürich, and met his sister in Klosters that afternoon, no doubt telling her that he had travelled out by boat and train in the usual way. He immediately carried her off on a long climbing expedition, sleeping in various mountain huts, until he knew that it would be too late for him to be in time for the inquest or the funeral, at either of which he might be recognized. (The Swiss authorities, by the way, have been very helpful in tracing the guide whom they took with them.)
“So far as he could tell, everything had gone according to plan. His father would be found dead of an overdose of his usual medicine, a sympathetic coroner would find that death was accidental and no questions would ever be asked. And that, no doubt, was what would have happened, but for three unfortunate accidents—firstly, the presence of a remarkably apt quotation by the bedside; secondly, the fact that having just come to the end of one bottle of tablets the deceased had opened another to make up his usual dose; and lastly, the very peculiar manner in which the old gentleman had talked to me on the eve of his death. And the son had put it out of his power to correct these misconceptions at the inquest! Whether he realized at once how fatal a finding of suicide was to his hopes of reaping the reward of his crime, I don’t know. At all events, he learned it soon enough. It put him in a very nasty position.” Mallett chuckled. “A very nasty position indeed! Having taken the appalling risk of committing murder, he had to take the yet more terrible risk of proving that a murder had been committed—by someone.
“And so Stephen Dickinson, the gambler that he was, decided on the greatest gamble of his life. And before taking any other step, he came round to see—me, of all people. I suppose he thought that I might be able to give him some useful facts, that would help him in disproving suicide, but I fancy that his real motive was to see whether he could get away with an interview with me without arousing any suspicion in my mind. If he could do that, no doubt he felt that he would be safe in carrying out the inquiries which he proposed. And he certainly succeeded! I never gave the matter a thought. It wasn’t until the other day, when the suicide of that man at Midchester brought the whole affair back into my mind again, that I eve
r seriously considered the question of whether Mr. Dickinson had been killed and if so, by whom.
“Of course when you come to look into it,” the inspector confessed with a shrug of his shoulders, “the whole affair becomes startlingly simple. There is the question of motive for one thing. But over and above that, the principal clue, as you no doubt have realized, Mr. Dedman, is the perfect knowledge that the killer must have had of his victim’s habits. Consider: he must have known, in the first place, that he would be at this particular hotel, and sleep in this particular bedroom. He must have known that he was accustomed to this particular drug, and to taking it in this particular way. He must even have been familiar with his insistence that the tea should always be left outside the door. Now who on earth could have had such a combination of knowledge except a member of the deceased’s own family?”
“Something of that sort had occurred to me,” remarked Dedman. “That was why I favored the theory that the murderer had made a mistake and that the deceased had taken the poison intended for someone else.”
“Instead of which,” Mallett rejoined, “if Vanning—whose real name is Purkis, by the way, a nasty little blackmailer—if he had slept in the room that was originally intended for him, he would have been murdered in place of Mr. Dickinson!
“Well, the rest of the story is no news to you, I think. After his interview with me, young Dickinson spent the next two weeks scouring the country trying to fix the responsibility for his own crime on to the shoulders of some innocent person, aided and abetted by his equally innocent sister and her fiancé. They investigated the antecedents of every person staying in the hotel, except, of course, the mythical Mr. Davitt.”