The Mad Hatter Mystery

by The Mad Hatter Mystery (retail) (epub)

  “I knew the Tower. My old man took me there once. He said it would be educational. Well, I seen her buying tickets for all them towers, and I had to buy ’em all, too, because I didn’t know where she’d go. But I thought, ‘This is a hell of a place to pick for rendyvoo,’ and then I tumbled to it. She was wise to being watched. I thought probably that trip to the country tipped her off, and her husband had maybe said something to let her guess—”

  “They had never gone there together before?” interrupted Hadley.

  “Not while I was watching them. But wait! You’ll understand that in a minute.”

  She was more subdued now when she spoke, and she told her story without comment. It was ten minutes past one when Laura Bitton arrived. After buying her tickets and a little guide, she had gone into the refreshment-room and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. All the time she ate she watched the clock with every sign of nervousness and impatience. “And, what’s more,” Mrs. Larkin explained, “she wasn’t carrying that arrow thing you had on your desk this afternoon. The only place she could have had it was inside her coat; and when she got through eating she opened her coat and shook it to get rid of the crumbs. I’ll take my oath there wasn’t nothing there.”

  At twenty minutes past one Laura Bitton left the refreshment room and hurried away. At the Middle Tower she hesitated, looked about, and presently moved along the causeway, and hesitated again at the Byward Tower. There she consulted the map in her guidebook and looked carefully about her.

  “I could see what was in her mind,” Mrs. Larkin told them. “She didn’t want to hang around the door, like a tart or something; but she wanted to be sure she saw him when he got there. But it was dead easy. Anybody who came in would’ve had to walk straight along that road—up towards the Traitors’ Gate place and the Bloody Tower. So she walked along the road, slow, looking all around. She’d been walking in the center of the road, and I was just far behind enough to keep her in sight in that fog. Then when she got near the Traitors’ Gate place she turned to the right and stopped again.”

  So that, Rampole reflected, was what Philip Driscoll saw when he “kept looking out of the window” in the general’s quarters, as Parker had described. He saw the woman waiting for him down in Water Lane. And soon afterwards he said he would take a stroll in the grounds, and hurried out. In the American’s brain the weird and misty scene was taking form. Laura Bitton with her free stride and healthy face; the brown eyes tortured; tapping the pamphlet guide against her hand and hesitating at the rail as she waited for the man who was already there. Driscoll hurrying downstairs, brushing past Arbor outside the King’s House—

  “She’d moved back,” Mrs. Larkin went on, “in a doorway on the right-hand side of the Traitors’ Gate. I’d flattened myself against the same wall a little distance back. Then I saw a little guy in plus-fours come out from under the arch of the Bloody Tower. He looked up and down, quick; and he didn’t see—er—XNineteen because she was back in that door. I thought it was Driscoll, but I wasn’t sure. Neither was she, I guess, for a minute, because she’d expected him to come the other way. Then he starts to walk back and forth, and next he goes over to the rail. I heard him use a cuss word, and there was a sound like a match striking.

  “Now, here’s the joker in the deck. I don’t know whether you noticed. But that archway thing, where all them spikes in the gate are, sticks out about seven or eight feet on either side of the rail. If you’re in that roadway, and looking down it in a straight line, you can’t see the rail in front of the steps at all. For the time being it was fine for me, because I could get within a couple of feet of them without being seen.

  “So XNineteen knew it was Driscoll all right. She slipped out of the door and turned the corner towards the rail. I couldn’t see her and she couldn’t see me, so I came up close. The fog was pretty thick, anyway.”

  Mrs. Larkin took another cigarette from the box. She bent forward.

  “Now, I’m not making anything up. I can tell you every word they said, because there wasn’t much of it, and it’s my business to remember. The first thing he said was, ‘Laura, for God’s sake what did you want to bring me down here for? I’ve got friends here. Is it true that he’s found out?’ What she said at first I couldn’t hear, because it was so low. It was something about that was the reason why she had said to come here, because if either of ’em was seen they could be calling on people they knew. Then he said that was a crazy idea, and was it true that he’d found out; he asked that again. She said yes. And she said, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said, ‘Yes, yes, but I’m in a frightful mess.’ They was both pretty upset and got to talking louder. He said something about his uncle, and all of a sudden he stopped and said, ‘Oh, my God!’ It was frightful to hear him say it like that, I’m telling you, as though he’d just thought of something.

  “She asked him what was the matter. Here’s what he said. ‘Laura, there’s something I’ve got to do here, and I forgot all about it. It won’t take two seconds, but I’ve got to do it or I’m ruined.’ His voice was shaking. It sounded bad. He said, ‘Don’t stay with me. We might be seen. Go in and look at the Crown Jewels, and then walk up to the parade-ground. I’ll join you there inside five minutes. Don’t ask me any questions, but please go.’

  “There was a kind of shuffling, and I was afraid of being seen, so I backed away. Then I heard him walking and he called out, ‘It’ll be all right; don’t worry.’ I heard her walk up and down for a second or two. Then she walked out in the roadway, and I thought for a minute she’d seen me. But she whirled around and started toward the Bloody Tower, and I followed. I didn’t see him; I suppose he’d gone on ahead. That was about twenty-five minutes to two.”

  Hadley leaned forward. “You say you followed?” he demanded. “Did you see her bump into anybody?”

  “Bump into anybody?” she repeated, blinking. “No. But then I mightn’t have. I slipped inside that big arch of the Bloody Tower and up against the wall, in case she turned back. I have a kind of idea that some man passed me; but it was foggy, and under that arch darker than hell. I waited a second and followed again.

  “I heard her speak to one of them birds in the funny hats and say, ‘Which way to the Crown Jewels?’ and he directed her to a door not very far on the other side of the arch, and I was still there.”

  Mrs. Larkin paused to light the cigarette she had been holding for some time.

  “That’s all,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “He didn’t come near her, because somebody killed him just after he’d left her. But I know she didn’t, because I took a look in that place where the steps go down—I looked there, mind you, before I followed her up in the Bloody Tower. I was sort of craning my neck around to see up under the arch to the Bloody Tower, and I put out my hand to touch the rail so’s I wouldn’t fall over backwards, and naturally I looked over my shoulder. He wasn’t there then. And I had her in sight the rest of the time. As I said, she went to see the Crown Jewels. So did I. But she didn’t look at ’em much. She was kind of white and restless, and she kept looking out the windows. I left before she did. I didn’t want to attract notice. And I’d seen that if you went in the Bloody Tower and up to a kind of little balcony—”

  “Raleigh’s Walk,” the chief inspector said, glancing at Dr. Fell.

  “—then you could see anybody who came back from looking at them jewels. Unless you went back the way you come, there was no other way out. So I waited. And before long she come back, and stood there a while in the road that goes up the hill from the Bloody Tower to that big open space.”

  “Tower Green.”

  “Yeah. Well, she started to walk up, kind of listless, and I walked up afterwards. But she didn’t do anything. I could see her, because it was high ground and the fog was thin. She sat on a bench, and talked to one of them guards, and kept looking at her watch. But she was patient, all right. I wouldn’t have waited that long for any man in God’s world. She waited over half an hour just sitting o
n one of them benches in the wet, without moving, and finally she started to leave. You know the rest.”

  Mrs. Larkin’s hard little eyes moved about the group and she drew in a gust of cigarette smoke. “Well. Feenee. There’s the words and music. I promised to say ’em, and I did. I don’t know who killed Driscoll, but I’m damn sure she didn’t.”

  XIII

  Wherein Miss Bitton Burbles

  WHEN SHE had ceased speaking, nobody cared to break the silence. It was so quiet in the little sitting room that the hoarse mumble of the radio could be heard again from some flat upstairs. They heard footsteps on the tiles of the hall, the clang of an iron gate, and then the long, humming whir of the automatic lift. Distantly, motor horns honked and hooted from the other side of the Square.

  For the first time Rampole felt how chill it was here, and drew his coat about him. A deeper stamp of death had come on the room, as of fingers slowly pressed into sand. Philip Driscoll was no more than the white fragments of the plaster image scattered on the hearth. The dancing tinkle of a barrel-organ began to make itself heard in Tavistock Square. Faintly, from upstairs, a creak and another clang; and the hum of the descending lift.

  Lester Bitton moved the dusty window curtain off his shoulder, and turned about. There was about him now a curious, quiet dignity. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have done what had to be done. Is there anything more?”

  They knew what it had cost him to listen to that recital in the presence of strangers, or alone. He stood quiet, conventional, almost polite, with the pouches showing under his eyes, and his bowler hat in his hand. And nobody knew what to say.

  At length it was Dr. Fell who spoke. He was sitting spread out in a leather chair, the tool-basket in his lap like a dog, and his eyes old and tired.

  “Man,” he said somberly, “go home. You’ve done some sneaking things in your time, like all the rest of us. But you smashed only one figure when you might have smashed two. You spoke up like a man when you might have denounced her. Go home. We can’t keep your name out of this altogether, but we’ll save you all the publicity we can.”

  The doctor’s dull eyes moved over to Hadley. Hadley nodded.

  Lester Bitton stood for a time motionless. He seemed weary and a trifle puzzled. Then his big hands moved up, adjusted his scarf and buttoned up his coat. He walked rather blindly when he went to the door, but until he reached it he did not put on his hat.

  “I—I thank you, gentlemen,” he said in a low voice. He made a little bow. “I—I am very fond of her, you see. Good night.”

  The door with the broken lock closed behind him. They heard the vestibule of the outer hall open and shut wheezily. The tinkle of the barrel-organ grew louder and died.

  “That’s the ‘Maine Stein Song,’” observed the doctor, who had been cocking an ear to the music. “Why do people say they don’t like street organs? I’m very fond of street organs myself. I always feel like a Grenadier Guard, and throw out my chest, when I pass one. It’s like going on errands to band music, as though there were some triumphal fête about buying two lamb chops and a bottle of beer. By the way, Mrs. Larkin—”

  The woman had risen. She turned sharply.

  “It’s not going to be brought out at the inquest, you know, that there was really anything serious between Mrs. Bitton and Driscoll. I imagine you’ve already been paid to keep quiet.” Dr. Fell raised his stick sleepily. “It’s money well earned. But don’t try to earn any more. That’s blackmail, you know. They put you in jail for it. Good night.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Mrs. Larkin agreed, patting the puffs of hair over her ears. “If you birds are on the level with me, I’m on the level with you—y’know what I mean? Men are crazy, anyway,” she added, reflectively. The harsh, young-old face was cut into whimsical lines. “If I’d been that dame’s old man, I’d have gone home and blacked both ’er eyes. But men are crazy. My Cuthbert was. Still, I loved that old buzzard till he got knocked off in a gunfight under the Third Avenue El in New York. Every so often he would walk out with some other skirt; and that kept me so upset I never thought of walking out on him. That’s the way to treat skirts. Keeps ’em in line. Well, I’m off to the pub. G’night. See you at the inquest.”

  When she had gone the rest of them sat silent. Dr. Fell was wheezing sleepily. And again Hadley began to pace about the room.

  “So that’s settled,” he said. “I think we can take Mrs. Bitton off the list of suspects. I doubt if Larkin’s lying. Her information is too exactly in line with all the other facts she couldn’t possibly have known. Now what?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Not much, for the moment. It all rests on what it was Driscoll remembered he’d forgotten to do when he spoke to Mrs. Bitton in front of the Traitors’ Gate. He started for somewhere, but he didn’t get very far away, and then he ran into somebody—the murderer.”

  “Fair enough,” grunted the doctor.

  “Now, first, there’s the direction he might have gone. Larkin didn’t see him go. But we know he didn’t go along Water Lane towards the Byward or Middle Tower; towards the gate, in other words. Because Larkin was standing there, and she would have seen him pass.

  “There are only two other directions he could have gone.” From his invaluable briefcase Hadley took a small map of the Tower, which he had evidently been studying ever since his visit. “He could have gone straight along Water Lane in the other direction. The only place he could have gone in that direction is towards another arch, similar to the Bloody Tower and a hundred feet or so away in the same wall, the inner ballium wall. From that arch a path leads up to the White Tower, which is almost in the center of the whole enclosure. Now, unless all our calculations are wrong, and there’s some piece of evidence we haven’t heard, why on earth should he be going to the White Tower? Or, for that matter, to the main guard, the store, the hospital, the officers’ quarters, the barracks, or any place he could have reached by going through that arch?

  “Besides, he hadn’t got very far away from the Traitors’ Gate before he met the murderer. Traitors’ Gate is an ideal place for murder on a foggy day. It would have occurred to anybody. But if Driscoll had been starting for the White Tower and met the murderer quite some distance from Traitors’ Gate, it wouldn’t have been very practical for the murderer to drive that steel bolt through him, pick him up, carry him back, and pitch him over the rail. Physically, it could have been easy; Driscoll’s a feather-weight. But the risk of being seen carrying that burden any distance, even in the fog, would have been too great.”

  Hadley paused in his pacing before the mantelpiece. He stared a moment at the idiotic painted face of the doll; and some idea seemed to pinch down the wrinkles round his mouth. But he dismissed it and went on.

  “On the other hand, the murderer couldn’t say, ‘Look here, old man, let’s stroll back to the Traitors’ Gate; I want to talk to you.’ And naturally Driscoll would have said, ‘Why? What’s the matter with telling me here?’ Also he was in a fearful bother and stew to get somewhere and do something. He would more likely have said, ‘Sorry. I can’t talk to you at all,’ and gone on. No, it won’t do. Driscoll had no business in that direction, anyway. So there’s only one alternative.”

  Dr. Fell took out a cigar.

  “Namely,” he inquired, “that Driscoll went the same direction as Mrs. Bitton did—through the arch of the Bloody Tower?”

  “Yes. All indications show that.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance,” Hadley answered, slowly, “what Larkin said. She heard Driscoll walk away, and then Mrs. Bitton walked up and down in front of the rail a minute or so—to give Driscoll time to go on up there ahead of her. Driscoll said they mustn’t be seen together. And once you get inside the inner ballium wall, as Larkin said, you’re in view of pretty well everybody; especially as it’s high ground, and the fog is thin. Larkin had a positive impression that he’d gone on ahead of Mrs. Bitton. And, above all, that’s the re
asonable direction for him to have gone, because—”

  “Because it’s the way to the King’s House,” supplied Dr. Fell.

  Hadley nodded. “Whatever he had forgotten, and went to do, was in the general’s quarters at the King’s House. That’s the only part of the Tower he ever had any business in. He was going back. There was somebody he had to speak with on the phone, or some message he had to give Parker. But he never got there.”

  “Good work,” said the doctor, approvingly. “I seem to act as a stimulant. Gradually that subconscious imagination of yours, Hadley, is working to the surface. And by degrees everything seems to center round the arch under the Bloody Tower. Hence we perceive the following points: The arch under this tower is a broad tunnel about twenty feet long, and the road runs on a steep uphill slant. At the best of times it is rather dark, but on a foggy day it is what Mrs. Larkin, who has evidently read Dante, describes as black as hell.”

  Hadley broke off his fierce musing. He said, petulantly, “Look here. It seems to me that I do all the reconstructing. And when I find the right answer, you wave your hand calmly and say you knew it all the time. Now either you do or you don’t, but if you don’t—”

  “I am pursuing,” Dr. Fell said, with dignity, “the Socratic method. Don’t say, ‘Bah,’ as I perceive you are about to do. I want to lead you along and see where this hypothesis gets us. Hence—”

  “H’m,” the chief inspector observed, struck with an idea.

  “Now that I come to think of it, by George! I know where all this fictional-detective stuff started in the first place. With that Greek philosopher chap in Plato’s Dialogues. He always annoyed me. A couple of Greeks would be walking along, not bothering anybody, and up would come this damned philosopher and say, ‘Bon jour’—or whatever they said in Athens—‘Bon jour, gents; have you got anything on hand this afternoon?’ Of course the other chaps didn’t. They never had. There never seemed to be any business to attend to in Greece. All they did was walk about hunting for philosophers. Then Socrates would say, ‘Right you are. Now let’s sit down here and talk.’ Whereupon he would propound some question for them to solve. He knew the answer, of course. It was never anything sensible, like ‘What do you think of the Irish question?’ or ‘Who will win the Test Match this year, Athens or Sparta?’ It was always some God-awful question about the soul. Socrates asked the question. Then one of the other chaps spoke up, and talked for about nine pages; and Socrates shook his head sadly and said, ‘No.’ Then another chap took a shot at it, and talked for sixteen pages. And Socrates said, ‘Ah!’ The next victim must have talked till it got dark, and Socrates said, ‘Possibly.’ They never up and hit him over the head with an obelisk, either. That’s what I wanted to do just from reading the thing, because he never would come out and say what he meant. That’s the origin of your detectives in fiction, Fell. And I wish you’d stop it.”