The Mad Hatter Mystery

by The Mad Hatter Mystery (retail) (epub)

  “H’mf. Yes.” The doctor nodded ponderously. “I suppose your membership in the society is well known?”

  “All my friends know of it, if that’s what you mean. It seems to amuse them at the Rag.”

  Hadley nodded slowly, contemplating Dr. Fell. “I begin to see what you’re driving at. Tell me, General. You and Mr. Dalrye were the only people at the Tower whom young Driscoll knew at all well?”

  “Ye-es, I suppose so. I think he’d met Sir Leonard, and he had a nodding acquaintance with a number of the warders, but—”

  “But you were the only ones he’d be apt to call on, weren’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  Dalrye’s mouth opened a trifle, and he sat up. Then he sank back into his chair. His fist hammered slowly on the arm.

  “I see, sir. You mean, then—you mean the murderer had made certain both General Mason and I were out?” The doctor spoke in a testy voice, ringing the ferrule of his cane as he hammered it on the floor.

  “Of course he did. If you had been here, he’d certainly have been with you. If the general had been here in your absence, he might have been with the general. And the murderer wouldn’t have any chance to lure him to a suitable spot in the fog and put an end to him.”

  Dalrye looked troubled. “All the same,” he said, “I’m willing to swear it was really Phil’s voice on the phone that second time. My God! man—excuse me, sir!” He swallowed, and as Dr. Fell only beamed blandly he went on with more assurance, “What I mean is, I knew that voice as well as I knew anybody’s. And if what you say is true, it couldn’t have been Phil’s voice at all. Besides, how did this person, whoever it was, know that Phil had arranged to meet me down here at one o’clock? And why all the rigmarole about being ‘afraid of his head’?”

  “Those facts,” said Dr. Fell composedly, “may provide us with very admirable clues. Think them over. By the way, what sort of voice did young Driscoll have?”

  “What sort of—? Well—” Dalrye hesitated. “The only way to describe it is incoherent. He thought so fast that he ran miles ahead of what he was trying to say. And when he was excited his voice tended to grow high.”

  Dr. Fell, his head on one side and his eyes half closed, was nodding slowly. He peered up as a knock sounded at the door, and the chief warder entered. He had moved through these events as unruffled as he might have moved on this afternoon round of inspection; a precise, mediaeval figure in blue-and-red uniform, with a long mustache carefully brushed.

  “The police surgeon is here, sir,” he said, “and several other men from Scotland Yard. Are there any instructions?”

  Hadley started to rise, and reconsidered. “No. Just tell them the usual routine, if you please; they’ll understand. I want about a dozen pictures of the body, from all angles. Is there any place the body can conveniently be taken for examination?”

  “The Bloody Tower, Mr. Radburn,” said General Mason. “Use the Princes’ Room; that’s very suitable. Have you got Parker here?”

  “Outside, sir. Have you any instructions about those visitors? They’re getting impatient, and—”

  “In a moment,” said Hadley. “Would you mind sending Parker in?” As the chief warder withdrew, he turned to Dalrye. “You have those visitors’ names?”

  “Yes. And I rather overstepped my rights,” said Dalrye. He drew from his wallet a number of sheets of paper torn from a notebook. “I was very solemn about it. I instructed them to write down names, addresses, occupations, and references. If they were foreigners, their length of stay in the United Kingdom, the boat they landed on, and where they intended to go. Most of them were obvious tourists, and they got alarmed at the red tape; I don’t think there’s any harm in them, and they didn’t show any fight. Except Mrs. Bitton, that is. And one other woman.”

  He handed the bundle of sheets to Hadley. The chief inspector glanced up sharply. “One other woman? Who was she?”

  “I didn’t notice what she wrote, but I remembered her name from the way she acted. Hard-faced party. You see, I had it all very official, to scare ’em into writing the truth. And this woman was wary. She said, ‘You’re not a notary, are you, young man?’ and I was so surprised that I looked at her. Then she said, ‘You’ve got no right to do this, young man. We’re not under oath. My name is Larkin, and I’m a respectable widow, and that’s all you need to know.’ I said she could do as she liked, but if she found herself in jug it was no affair of mine. She said, ‘Bah!’ and glared a bit. But she wrote down something.”

  Hadley shuffled through the papers.

  “Larkin,” he repeated. “H’m. We must look into this. When the net goes out, we often get small fish we’re not after at all. Larkin, Larkin—here it is. ‘Mrs. Amanda Georgette Larkin.’ The ‘Mrs.’ in brackets; she wants that clearly understood. Stiff handwriting. Address— Hallo!”

  He put down the sheets and frowned. “Well, well! The address is ‘Tavistock Chambers, 34, Tavistock Square.’ So she lives in the same building as young Driscoll, eh? This is getting to be quite a convention. We’ll see her presently. For the moment—”

  Sir William had been rubbing his jaw uneasily. He said, “Look here, Hadley, it isn’t quite the thing— I mean, don’t you think you’d better bring Mrs. Bitton away from the crowd? She’s my sister-in-law, you know, and after all—”

  “Most unfortunate,” said Hadley, composedly. “Where’s that man Parker?”

  Parker was a most patient man. He had been standing hatless and coatless in the fog just outside the crack of the door, waiting to be summoned. At Hadley’s remark he knocked, came inside, and stood at attention.

  He was a square, brownish, grizzled man with a military cut. Like most corporals of his particular day, he ran largely to mustache; nor did he in the least resemble a valet. The high white collar pinioned his head, as though he were having a daguerreotype taken, and gave him a curious expression of seeming to talk over his inquisitor’s head.

  “Yussir,” he said, gruffly and quickly.

  “You are General Mason’s—” Hadley was going to say “valet,” as fitting to a retired commander, but he substituted “orderly.” “You are General Mason’s orderly?”

  Parker looked pleased. “Yussir.”

  “Mr. Dalrye has already told us of the two phone calls from Mr. Driscoll. You answered the phone both times, I believe?”

  Parker was ready. His voice was hoarse, but his aspirates under perfect control, and he tended, if anything, to be a trifle flowery. This was an important occasion.

  “Yussir. On both occasions I had reason to go to the telephone, sir.”

  “So you had some conversation with Mr. Driscoll?”

  “I did, sir. Our talks was not lengthy, but full of meat.”

  “Er—quite so,” said the chief inspector. “Now, could you swear it was Mr. Driscoll’s voice both times?”

  Parker frowned. “Well, sir, when you say, ‘Could you swear it?’—that’s a long word,” he answered, judicially. “To the best of my knowledge and discernment from previous occasions, sir, it were.”

  “Very well. Now, Mr. Dalrye left here in the car shortly before one o’clock. Do you remember at what time Mr. Driscoll arrived?”

  “One-fifteen, sir.”

  “How are you so positive?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Parker said, stolidly. “I can inform you of everything that happens at the time which it happens, exact, sir, by the movements at the barracks. Or by the bugles. One-fifteen it was.”

  Hadley leaned back and tapped his fingers slowly on the desk.

  “Now, take your time, Parker. I want you to remember everything that happened after Mr. Driscoll arrived. Try to remember conversations, if you can. First, what was his manner? Nervous? Upset?”

  “Very nervous and upset, sir.”

  “And how was he dressed?”

  “Cloth cap, light-brown golf suit, worsted stockings, club tie, sir. No overcoat—” He paused for prompting, but Hadley was silent, and he we
nt on. “He asked for Mr. Dalrye. I said Mr. Dalrye had gone to his rooms in response to his own message. He then demonstrated incredulity. He used strong language, at which I was forced to say, ‘Mr. Driscoll, sir,’ I said, ‘I talked to you myself.’ I said, ‘When I answered the telephone you thought I was Mr. Dalrye; and you said all in a rush, “Look here, you’ve got to help me out—I can’t come down now, and—” That’s what you said.’” Parker cleared his throat. “I explained that to him, sir.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘How long has Mr. Dalrye been gone?’ I told him about fifteen minutes. And he said, ‘Was he in the car?’ and I said ‘Yes,’ and he said—excuse me, sir—‘Oh, my God! that’s not long enough to drive up there on a foggy day.’ But, anyway, he went to the telephone and rang up his own flat. There was no answer. He said to get him a drink, which I did. And while I was getting it I noticed that he kept looking out of the window.”

  Hadley opened his half-closed eyes. “Window? What window?”

  “The window of the little room where Mr. Dalrye works, sir, in the east wing of the King’s House.”

  “What can you see from there?”

  Parker, who had become so interested in his story that he forgot to be flowery, blinked and tried to right his thoughts. “See, sir?”

  “Yes! The view. Can you see the Traitors’ Gate, for instance?”

  “Oh. Yussir! I thought you was referring to—well, sir, to something I saw, which I didn’t think was important, but now I get to thinking—” He shifted from one foot to the other.

  “You saw something?”

  “Yussir. That is, it was after Mr. Driscoll had left me, sir.”

  Hadley seemed to fight down a desire to probe hard. He had half-risen, but he sat back and said, evenly, “Very well. Now go on with the story, Parker, from the time you saw Mr. Driscoll looking out of the window.”

  “Very good, sir. He finished his drink, and had another neat. I asked him why he didn’t go back to his flat, if he wanted to see Mr. Dalrye; I said he could take the tube at Mark Lane and it wouldn’t be a very long ride. And he said, ‘Don’t be a fool; I don’t want to take the chance of missing him again.’ Which was sound sense, sir. He said, ‘We’ll keep ringing my place very five minutes until I know where he is.’”

  Parker recounted the conversations in a gruff, sing-song voice, and in such a monotone that Rampole could tell only with difficulty where he was quoting Driscoll and where he spoke himself. The words were thrown steadily over Hadley’s head.

  “But he could not sit still, sir. He roamed about. Finally he said, ‘My-God-I-can’t-stand-this; I’m going for a walk in the grounds.’ He instructed me to keep ringing his flat after Mr. Dalrye, and that he would keep close within call. So he went out.”

  “How long was he with you?”

  “A matter of ten minutes, say, sir. No; it was less than that. Well, sir, I paid no more attention. I should not have seen anything, except—” Parker hesitated. He saw the veiled gleam in Hadley’s eyes; he saw Sir William bent forward, and Dalrye pausing with a match almost to his cigarette. And he seemed to realize he was a person of importance. He gave the hush its full value.

  “—except, sir,” he suddenly continued in a louder voice, “for the match-in-ashuns of fate. I may remark, sir, that earlier in the day there had been a light mist. But nothing of what might be termed important. It was possible to see some distance, and objects was distinct. But it was a-growing very misty. That was how I come to look out of the window. And that was when I saw Mr. Driscoll.”

  Hadley’s fingers stopped tapping while he scrutinized the other. Then they began to tap again, more rapidly.

  “How did you know it was Mr. Driscoll? You said the mist was thickening.”

  “So it were. Yussir!” agreed Parker, nodding so vigorously that the points of his collar jabbed his neck. “I didn’t say I saw his face. Nobody could have recognized him that way: he were just an outline. But, sir, wait! There was his size. There was his plus-fours, which he alwis wore lower-down than other gentlemen. And when he went out he was a-wearing his cap with the top all pulled over to one side. Then I saw him walking back and forth in Water Lane in front of the Traitors’ Gate, back and forth, and I knew his walk.”

  “But you can’t swear it was actually he?”

  “Yussir. I can. Becos, sir, he went to the rail in front of Traitors’ Gate and leaned on it. And whereupon he struck a match to light a cigarette. And—mind you, sir, if you’ll excuse me—not another man here has the eyesight I have, and just for a second I saw part of the face. It was one of them big sputtering matches, sir, if you know what I mean. Yussir, I’m positive. I know. I saw ’im just before the other person touched ’im on the arm.”

  “What?” demanded Hadley, with such suddenness that Parker took it for a slur on his veracity.

  “Sir, so help me God. The other person that was standing over by the side of Traitors’ Gate. And that come out and touched Mr. Driscoll on the arm. Mind, sir, I’m not sure of that, becos the match was out. But it looked as though ”

  “I see,” Hadley agreed, mildly. “Did you see this other person, Parker?”

  “No sir. It was too dark there; shadowed, sir. I shouldn’t even have seen Mr. Driscoll if I hadn’t been watching him and saw ’im strike the match. It were what I should call a Shape.”

  “Could you tell whether this person was a man or a woman?”

  “Er—no, sir. No. Besides,” explained Parker, drawing in his neck again, “it were not in any manner of speaking as though I was watching, sir. I turned away then. I was not endowed with the opportunity to see no further occurrences.”

  “Quite. Do you know at what time this was?”

  Parker screwed his face up into a grimace which was evidently regret. “Ah!” he said profoundly, “ah, I confess you’ve got me, sir. You see, it transpired between the quarter-hours of the clock. It were shortly past one-thirty. More I couldn’t tell you, not if I wanted to, sir. Except I know it were not so late as a quarter to two. Becos that was when I phoned Mr. Driscoll’s flat again and Mr. Dalrye had arrived there, and I told him Mr. Driscoll was here a-waiting.”

  Hadley brooded, his head in his hands. After a time he looked across at General Mason.

  “And the doctor here said, General, that when you discovered the body at two-thirty Driscoll had been dead at least half an hour—probably three-quarters? Yes. Well, that’s that. He was murdered within ten minutes or fifteen minutes after this so-called Shape touched his arm at the rail. The police surgeon will be able to tell us exactly. He’s rather a wizard at that sort of thing.”

  He paused, and looked sharply at Parker.

  “You didn’t notice anything more, did you? That is, you didn’t go to look for Mr. Driscoll, to tell him you’d found Mr. Dalrye?”

  “No, sir. I knew he would come back and ask me, if he was that impatient, and, anyway, Mr. Dalrye was a-coming down here. Though he swore some. I thought it was funny Mr. Driscoll not coming up to ask, sir. Of course,” Parker said, deprecatingly, “I can comprehend at the present juncture why he didn’t.”

  “I think we all can,” said the chief inspector, grimly. “Very well, Parker. That’s all, and thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”

  Parker clicked his heels and went out glowing.

  The chief inspector drew a long breath. “Well, gentlemen, there you are. That fixes us. The murderer had considerably over half an hour’s time to clear out. And, as the general says, what between rain and fog the sentries at the gates wouldn’t have been able to see anything of a person who slipped out. Now we get down to work. Our first hope—”

  He picked up the sheets containing the names of the visitors.

  “Since we have something to go on,” he continued, “we can use our guests. We know the approximate time of the murder. Hallo!” he called towards the door, and a warder opened it. “Will you go down to the Bloody Tower and send up the sergeant in charge of the p
olice officers who have just arrived? Thanks.”

  “I hope it’s Hamper,” he added to his companions. “It probably is, too. First, we’ll put aside the slips made out by the three people we want to interview ourselves—Mrs. Bitton, Mr. Arbor, and, just as a precaution, the careful Mrs. Larkin. Let’s see, Larkin—”

  “Mrs. Bitton didn’t make out any, sir,” Dalrye told him. “She laughed at the idea.”

  “Right, then. Here’s the Arbor one. Let’s see. I say, that’s a beautiful handwriting; like the lettering on a calling-card. Fastidious, this chap.” He examined the paper curiously. “‘Julius Arbor. 440 Park Avenue, New York City. No occupation.’”

  “Doesn’t need one,” Sir William growled. “He’s got pots.”

  “‘Arrived Southampton, March 4th, S.S. Bremen. Duration of stay indefinite. Destination, Villa Seule, Nice, France.’ He adds, very curtly, ‘If further information is necessary, suggest communicating with my London solicitors, Messrs. Hillton and Dane, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’ H’m.”

  He smiled to himself, put the sheet aside, and glanced hastily at the others.

  “If you’ve ever heard any of these other names, gentlemen, sing out; otherwise I’ll let the sergeant handle them.

  “Mr. and Mrs. George G. Bebber, 291 Aylesborough Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.A. Jno. Simms, High Street, Glytton, Hants. He adds, ‘Of the well-known plumbers, as above.’ Mr. and Mrs. John Smith, Surbiton. Well, well! That’s descriptive enough. Lucien Lefèvre, 60 Avenue Foch, Paris. Mlle Clémentine Lefèvre, as above. Miss Dorothea Delevan Mercenay, 23 Elm Avenue, Meadville, Ohio, U.S.A. Miss Mercenay adds M.A. to her name, underscored heavily. That’s the lot. They sound harmless enough.”

  “Sergeant Betts, sir,” said a voice at the door. A very serious-faced young man saluted nervously. He had obviously expected an inspector, and the presence of the chief was disturbing.