“Try to consider what my position was. Everything had gone upside down. I thought I had spoken to Driscoll; yet here was the voice. I had been speaking in that room to somebody—certainly a criminal and in all probability a killer. I had outlined completely my position as owner of the manuscript. And somebody—I had forgotten which one—made it clear that if I had employed a thief to take my own property, he could expect only pay for his thievery and not the immense sum I had mentioned I would pay. I—well, to tell you the truth, I was not thinking at all. I was only feeling. I felt certain, without knowing why, that the ‘voice’ had killed Driscoll. Everything had gone mad, and, to make it worse, if I could believe my ears this ‘voice’ was one of the police.
“Otherwise I should have gone back immediately and confessed the whole business. But I was afraid both of having the police on my side, and of having them against me. I suppose I acted insanely. But I could think of nothing else to do. It was only late this evening, when I was certain I heard somebody trying to get into my cottage, that I determined to end the suspense, one way or the other. That’s all, Inspector. I can make nothing of it, and I hope you have better luck.”
He sat back, bewildered, dejected, with his handkerchief again at his forehead.
“Still,” said Dr. Fell, musingly, “you could not swear the voice came from that room?”
“No. But—”
“And there is not one word you can definitely remember its having said?”
“I’m afraid not. You don’t believe me, I dare say—”
Dr. Fell drew back his chins and pushed out his chest in a meditative fashion, as though he were about to begin a lecture.
“Now, I’ve heard you out, Arbor, and I’ve got a few words to say. We’re all alone here. Nobody has heard your story but Sergeant Rampole and myself. We can forget it; that’s our business when no crime has been done; but I shouldn’t advise you to repeat it to anybody else. You would be in grave danger of being confined either in jail or in a lunatic asylum. Do you realize what you’ve said?” he inquired, slowly, lifting his cane to point. “There were four people in that room. You must, therefore, accuse the voice of being either the chief inspector of the C.I.D., one of his highest and most trusted officers, or the deputy governor of the Tower of London. If you retract that statement, and decide that the ‘voice’ actually was Driscoll, you lay yourself open to grave trouble in connection with a murder case. Your status is that of madman or suspected criminal. Do you want to take your choice?”
“But I’m telling you the truth, I swear before—”
“Man,” said Dr. Fell, with a real ring and thunder of earnestness in his voice, “I have no doubt you think you’re telling the truth. I have no doubt that in your obsession you might have heard anything. You heard a voice. The question is, what voice, and where did it come from?”
“All right,” Arbor said, despondently. “But what am I going to do? I’m in an impossible position whichever way I turn. My God! I wish I’d never heard of Poe or manuscripts or any— Besides, I’m in potential danger of my life. What the devil are you laughing at, Inspector?”
“I was merely smiling,” said Dr. Fell, “at your fears for your own skin. If that’s all you’re worrying about, you can stop. We have the murderer, safely. The ‘voice’ can’t hurt you, I guarantee that. And you don’t want to be tangled up in this affair any farther, do you?”
“Good God, no! You mean you have caught—”
“Arbor, the murder had no concern with your manuscript. You can forget it. You’ll feel like forgetting your fears, too, in the morning. You’re a secretive beggar and you can hold your tongue when it’s to your own advantage; I strongly advise you to hold your tongue now. The murderer is dead. Any inquest on Driscoll will be a private and perfunctory thing; it’ll be kept out of the press because it can’t serve any useful purpose. So you needn’t worry. Go to a hotel and get some sleep. Forget you ever heard the ‘voice’ on the telephone or anywhere else; and, if you hold your tongue, I’ll promise to hold mine.”
“But the man trying to get at me tonight—”
“He was one of my own constables, to scare you into telling what you know. Run along, man! You never were in any danger in the world.”
“But—”
“Run along, man! Do you want Sir William to walk in here on you and make trouble?”
It was the most effective argument he could have used. Arbor did not even inquire too closely into the identity of the murderer. So long as the murderer had no designs on him, his aura conveyed that he was averse to the gruesome details of a vulgar murder. When Dr. Fell and Rampole walked with him to the front door, they found Hadley, who had shortly dismissed the two constables, in the front hall.
“I don’t think,” the doctor said, “that we need detain Mr. Arbor any longer. I have his story, and I’m sorry to say it doesn’t help us. Good night, Mr. Arbor.”
“I shall walk,” said Arbor with cool dignity, “to a hotel. The walk will do me good. Good night, gentlemen.”
“He was not long in letting himself out.”
“You dismissed him damned quickly,” growled the chief inspector, but without much interest, “after all the trouble he gave us. But I was afraid it might turn out to be a mare’s nest. What did he say?”
Dr. Fell chuckled. “Driscoll phoned him and offered him the manuscript. He thought he might get mixed up as some sort of accessory.”
“But, good God! I thought you said—”
“Blind panic, my boy. Driscoll would never have done it, you can rest assured. And, as you pointed out, it was in blind panic that he burnt the manuscript. Then Arbor had some sort of wild idea that he heard the dead man’s voice talking to him. You know, Hadley, if I were you I should never bring that man before a coroner’s jury. He’d make us all sound mad. But you don’t need him, do you?”
“Oh no. He wouldn’t have been called unless he turned up some evidence bearing on the murder.” The chief inspector rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes. “Voices! Bah! The man’s as neurotic as an old woman. I wasted people’s time for nothing, and made myself look a fool into the bargain. ‘Voices’! And all the time that confounded manuscript’s been only a red herring. Well, I’m glad he didn’t complicate matters by trying to identify the murderer’s voice.”
“So am I,” said Dr. Fell.
Stealthily the night noises of the house creaked against the stillness; a ghostly tingle from the crystal pendants of the chandelier, a footfall somewhere which echoed and passed.
“It’s all over, Fell,” Hadley remarked, in a tired voice. “All over in a day, thank God. The poor devil took the best way out. A few routine questions to go over, and we close the book. I’ve had a talk with the wife—”
“What do you do with the case, then?”
Hadley frowned. His dull eyes wandered about the hall. “I think,” he said, “it will go down officially as ‘unsolved.’ We’ll let it die down, and issue a bulletin to the Press Association to handle it lightly. There’s no good in the stink of a public inquest, anyway. Don’t you think there’s been enough tragedy in this house?”
“You needn’t justify yourself, my boy. I think there has. By the way, where is Sir William?”
“In his room. Hobbes got his door open and waked him up. Did he tell you?”
“Have you told him about—”
Hadley took a nervous turn about the hall. “I’m not so young as I used to be,” he observed, suddenly. “It’s only two o’clock in the morning and I’m dog-tired. I’ve told him a little. But he can’t seem to grasp it; the opiate hasn’t worn off. He’s sitting by a fire in his room, with a dressing-gown over his shoulders, as stupid as an image. All he kept saying was, ‘See that my guests have refreshment; see that my guests have refreshment.’ I think he had a vague idea he was a feudal lord, or a dream had got mixed into his thoughts. He’s seventy years old, Fell. You don’t think of his age when you talk to him.”
“What are you goi
ng to do, then?”
“I’ve had to send for Dr. Watson, the police surgeon. When he gets here I’ll have him fix something to wake the old man up; and then”—Hadley nodded grimly—“we’ll share the pleasant duty of telling him everything.”
They could hear a night wind muttering in the chimneys. Rampole thought of that portrait, the white eagle face, standing with shoulders back, in the library. And he thought again of a lonely man in a lonely house; the old war-eagle now, huddled in a dressing-gown before a low fire in his room, and counting armies in the blaze. He saw the long sharp nose, the tufted eyebrows, the orator’s mouth. He belonged to this ancient Mayfair which had never existed since it bloomed with flags for Wellington and nodded its head to the tap of ghostly drums.
Hobbes emerged from the rear of the hallway.
“At Sir William’s suggestion, gentlemen,” he said, “I have prepared some sandwiches and coffee in the library, and there is a decanter of whisky, if you should care for it.”
They moved slowly along the hall, back to the library, where a bright blaze was licking up round the coal in the grate, and a covered tray stood on a side table.
“Stay with Sir William, Hobbes,” Hadley directed. “If he—wakens, come down after me. Admit the police surgeon when he arrives, and show him upstairs.”
They sat down wearily in the firelight.
“I got the final proof,” Hadley declared, as the doctor did things with a tantalus, “when I talked to Mrs. Bitton a few minutes ago. She said she’d been down here and spoken to you. She said you were convinced her husband had killed Driscoll.”
“Did she? What did she think about it?”
“She wasn’t so sure, until I told her the full story; that’s what took me so long upstairs. I couldn’t get much out of her. She seemed almost as drugged as the old man. Her idea was that Bitton was quite capable of it, but that he’d be more likely to walk into Driscoll’s rooms and strangle him rather than waylay him in a dark corner with a crossbow bolt. And she couldn’t reconcile his putting the hat on Driscoll’s head. She was willing to swear he didn’t think along those lines; he wasn’t an imaginative type.” Hadley frowned at the fire, tapping his fingers on the arms of the chair. “It bothers me, Fell. She’s quite right about that, unless Bitton had unsuspected depths.”
The doctor, who was mixing drinks with his back to Hadley, stopped with his hand on the siphon. There was a pause, and then he spoke without turning.
“I thought you were satisfied?”
“I am, I suppose. There’s absolutely no other person who can fit the evidence. And what makes it certain— Did you know Bitton had a gift for mimicry? I didn’t, until she told me.”
“Eh?”
“Yes. His one talent, and he never employed it nowadays; he didn’t think it was—well, fitting. But Mrs. Bitton said he used to burlesque his brother making a speech, and hit him off to the life. He could easily have put in that fake telephone call.”
There was a curious, sardonic expression on the doctor’s face as he stood up. His eye wandered to Sir William’s picture, and he chuckled.
“Hadley,” he said, “that’s an omen. It’s coincidence carried to the nth degree. I couldn’t have believed it, and I’m glad we didn’t hear it at the beginning of the investigation; it would only have confused us. It’s too late now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s hear the full outline of what Bitton did, as you read it.”
Hadley settled back with a chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee.
“Well it’s fairly plain. Bitton had made up his mind to kill Driscoll when he returned from the trip. He was a little mad, anyhow, if his behavior tells everything; and it explains what happened afterwards.
“I don’t think he intended at first to make any secret of it. His plan was simply to go to Driscoll’s flat and choke the life out of him; and he made up his mind to do it that morning. He was determined to see Driscoll, you know. He borrowed Sir William’s key to be sure he could get into the apartment—which isn’t the course of a person paying a casual visit.
“He arrived there, and Driscoll was out. So he prowled through the apartment. In all likelihood he was looking for incriminating evidence against his wife and her lover. You remember the oil and the whetstone on Driscoll’s desk? The oil was fresh; Driscoll had probably been working on that crossbow bolt, and it was lying there conspicuously. Remember that the bolt had a significance to Bitton; it was one which he and his wife had bought together.”
Dr. Fell rubbed his forehead. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he muttered; “the omens are still at work. Carry on, Hadley.”
“And he found the top hat. He must have surmised that Driscoll was the Mad Hatter, but that didn’t interest him so much as a recollection of Driscoll’s wish to die in a top hat. You see the psychology, Fell? If he’d merely run across a top hat of Driscoll’s, the suggestion mightn’t have been so strong. But a hat belonging to his brother—a perfect piece of stage-setting.
“Suddenly his plan came to him. There was no reason why he should suffer for killing Driscoll. If he stabbed Driscoll at some place which wouldn’t be associated with Lester Bitton, and put the stolen hat on the body, he would have done two things: First, he would have put suspicion on the Mad Hatter as the murderer. But the hat thief was the man he was going to kill! And consequently, the police could never hang an innocent person for murder. Bitton was a sportsman, and I’ll give him credit for thinking of that first. Secondly, he would have fulfilled Driscoll’s bombastic wish.
“Further, from his point of view the choice of that bolt as a weapon was an ideal one. It had its significance, to begin with. And, though Driscoll had stolen the bolt secretly from his house, he didn’t know that. Seeing the bolt on Driscoll’s desk, he naturally imagined that Driscoll had got it openly—asked for it—and that anybody in his own house would know it was in Driscoll’s possession. Hence suspicion would be turned away from his own house! That was what he imagined. He couldn’t have been expected to think that Driscoll had carefully concealed a theft of that trumpery souvenir, when it could have been had for the asking. Can you imagine what must have been his horror, then, when he found us suspecting his wife?”
The doctor took a long drink of whisky.
“You’ve got a better case than I thought, my boy,” he said. “The Gentleman who pulls the cords must have been amused by this one. I am listening.”
“So, in his half-crazy brain, he evolves a new plan. He knew Driscoll was going to the Tower at one o’clock, to meet Dalrye, because he had heard it at breakfast. He didn’t know his wife was going there, of course. His one idea was to get Driscoll alone. If Driscoll went to the Tower, he would be certain to be with Dalrye; and a murder might be devilish awkward.
“You can see what he did. He took the hat and the bolt home with him, and left the house early; before one o’clock. He phoned Dalrye from a public box, imitated Driscoll’s voice, and got Dalrye away. At one o’clock he was at the Tower. But Driscoll didn’t appear; Driscoll was twenty minutes late.”
Hadley drank a mouthful of scalding coffee and set down the cup. He struck his fist into his palm. “Do you realize, man, that, if we look back over our times in this case, Driscoll must have walked into the Tower of London no more than a few minutes, or more likely a few seconds, before Laura Bitton did? Driscoll was late; she was early. And as soon as Driscoll got up to General Mason’s rooms he looked out of the window and saw Laura Bitton by Traitors’ Gate. In other words, Lester Bitton, lurking about for a suitable opportunity to kill Driscoll as soon as he could, saw both of them come in. He hadn’t bargained on her. There was to be a meeting, clearly. For fear of detection, he couldn’t strike until it was over.
“He waited. As he had thought, a person of Driscoll’s wild and restless nature wouldn’t sit cooped up in General Mason’s rooms. He would wander about, in any event. And he would certainly come down now, for his rendezvous with Laura. Fell, when
Driscoll came downstairs and met Laura at the rail, Bitton must have been concealed under the arch of the Bloody Tower, watching them.”
The doctor was sitting back, one hand shading his eyes. The fire had grown to a fierce heat now. Rampole was growing drowsy.
“He saw the interview, with what rage we can imagine. It must have grown on him until he was tempted to go out and strike them both down. He heard Laura Bitton say she loved him—and then, a thing which must have crazed him by its perverse irony, he saw Driscoll leave her, hurriedly and almost contemptuously, and walk towards him under the arch of the Bloody Tower. Driscoll had done more than loved his wife; he had scorned his wife. And now Driscoll was walking towards him in the dark and fog, and the crossbow bolt was ready in Bitton’s hand.”
Dr. Fell did not take his hand away from his eyes; he parted two fingers, and the bright eye gleamed suddenly behind his glasses.
“I say, Hadley, when you talked to Mrs. Bitton, did she say Driscoll really did go under the arch of the Bloody Tower?”
“She didn’t notice. She said that she was so upset she didn’t watch him. She turned away and walked in the roadway—where, you remember, Mrs. Larkin saw her, walking with her back to the Bloody Tower.”
“Ah!”
“She didn’t conceal anything,” Hadley said, dully. “I thought, when I spoke to her, that I was talking to an automaton—a dead person, or something of the sort. Driscoll went under the arch. It was all over in a moment: Bitton’s hand over his mouth, a wrench and a blow, and Driscoll died without a sound. And when Mrs. Bitton walked through the arch a few seconds later, her husband was holding against the wall the dead body of her lover. When they had gone, he took off Driscoll’s cap, opened the top hat—it was an opera hat, you know, and collapsible, so that it was easily concealed under a coat—and put it down over Driscoll’s eyes. He went out quickly and flung the body over the rail, where it got that smash on the back of the head. Then he went out one of the side gates, unobserved, threw Driscoll’s cap into the river—and, I dare say, went to the lunch room and refreshed himself with a cup of cocoa after his work.”
The Mad Hatter Mystery Page 25