The Mad Hatter Mystery

by The Mad Hatter Mystery (retail) (epub)

  “F-funny,” Dalrye said wildly. “When I was a kid I had a rubber toy once, a sort of doll-like thing that wheezed and squeaked when you punched it. I thought of that. Because the noise he made was just like that toy, only a hundred times louder and more horrible. Unearthly; can you see. Then there was a kind of hiss and gurgle of the toy getting the air in it again. And he didn’t move any more.

  “I got up. He’d driven that bolt into himself, or my falling on him had done it, until the point hit the floor. The back of his head had hit the iron fender when we went over. There wasn’t much blood, except a little stream not much thicker than a lead pencil, that came out the side of his mouth.”

  Dalrye sat back with his hands over his eyes.

  XXI

  Unsolved

  FOR A moment he could not go on. He reached blindly after the whiskey again. Rampole hesitated; and then helped him pour some more. Hadley had sat down now, and he was staring blankly at the fire.

  “I don’t understand,” Dalrye muttered in a dull voice; “I don’t know why he came back.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dr. Fell, “I can tell you. Sit quietly for a moment, boy, and rest yourself. Hadley, do you see now?”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean this. It should be plain to you; you gave me the clue yourself. When Driscoll stood there at the Traitors’ Gate, at the Tower of London, talking to Mrs. Bitton at one-thirty, he remembered something. The recollection of it startled him nearly out of his wits. He said he had to go and attend to it. What did he remember?”

  “Well?”

  “Think back! He was talking to her, and he mentioned something about his uncle. That was what made him remember, for his outburst followed it. Think! You’ve heard it a dozen times today.”

  Hadley sat up suddenly. “My God! It was the afternoon of his uncle’s monthly visit to him!”

  “Exactly. Bitton didn’t intend making the call, but Driscoll didn’t know that. He’d forgotten that visit, Driscoll had, in all the excitement of the last two days. And Bitton had a key to his flat. He would walk in there—and there, in the flat with no attempt to hide them, were the two hats he had stolen. That was bad enough. But if Bitton grew suspicious, and searched, and found his manuscript—”

  Hadley nodded. “He had to get back to his flat faster than he ever made it before, to head off Sir William.”

  “He couldn’t explain to Laura Bitton, you see. And, if he could, he couldn’t take the time. She would want explanations, or to complicate things; and he couldn’t delay. So he did what many another man has done with a woman. He shooed her away and said he would join her in five minutes. Of course, without any idea of doing it.

  “And do you see what he did? Remember your plan of the Tower, Hadley. Remember what General Mason told us. He couldn’t walk back along Water Lane towards the main gate. The way led only to the way out; he couldn’t have pretended an errand, and it would have roused the woman’s suspicions. So he went the other way along Water Lane, and out one of the other gates to Thames Wharf—unnoticed in the fog. That was at half-past one.”

  The doctor looked down at Dalrye and shook his head.

  “You yourself told me, Hadley, that by underground a person could go to Russell Square in fifteen minutes or even less. And it seemed to me, if Mrs. Bitton could do it at five o’clock, why couldn’t Driscoll have done it at one-thirty? He would arrive at the flat, in short, about ten minutes to two or a trifle later—the time the police surgeon said he died. But, you see, where all your calculations went wrong was in assuming Driscoll had never left the Tower. The possibility never entered your head. I don’t think we should have found a warder who saw him go out, even if we had tried, at that side gate. But the thing simply didn’t occur to anybody. If it had, it would have been a much more reasonable solution than his remembering an urgent phone call.”

  “But he was found on the Traitors’ Gate! I— Never mind,” said Hadley. “Do you feel like going on, Dalrye?”

  “So that was it,” the other said, dully. “I see. I see now. I only thought he might have suspected me.

  “Let me tell you what I did. He was dead. I saw that. And for a second I went into a sheer panic. I couldn’t think straight; my legs wouldn’t move, and I thought I must be going blind.

  “I saw that I’d committed a murder. I had already prepared the way for a theft, and I was in deeply enough, but here was a murder. Nobody would believe it had been an accident. And where I made my mistake was this: I thought Driscoll had told them at the Tower he was coming back there! I could only imagine that they knew! And I had already definitely proved that I was at the flat, because I’d spoken to Parker on the telephone. I thought Driscoll had just changed his mind, and returned—and there I was with the body, when everybody knew we were both there.”

  He shuddered.

  “Then my common sense came back all in a rush. I was cold, and empty inside, but I don’t think my brain ever worked so fast. I had only one chance. That was to get his body away from this flat, somehow, and dump it somewhere out in the open. Somewhere, say, on the way to the Tower—so that they would think he’d been caught on the way back.

  “And it came to me all in a flash—the car. The car was in that garage, not far away. The day was very foggy. I could get the car and drive it into the courtyard with the side-curtains on. Phil’s body was as light as a kitten. There were only two flats on the floor, and the windows overlooking the court were blank ones; with the fog to help me, there wasn’t great danger of being seen.”

  Dr. Fell looked at Hadley. “Quite right. The chief inspector was positive on that point, too, when he was considering how Mrs. Bitton could have got out of the flat. I think he remarked that a red Indian in a war bonnet could have walked out of that court without being observed. It was suggestive.”

  “Well—” Again Dalrye rubbed his eyes unsteadily. “I hadn’t much time. The thing to do was to save time by shooting over to the garage by the underground—I could do it, with luck, in two minutes, where it would have taken me ten to walk—to get the car, and come back for the body.

  “I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know what sort of face I put up in front of those garage people. I told them I was going home, rolled out, and shot back to the flat. If I’d been arrested then—” He swallowed hard. “I took up Phil’s body and carried it out. That was a ghastly time; carrying that thing. My God! I nearly fell down those little steps, and I nearly ran his head through the glass door. When I’d got him stowed in the back of the car, under a rug, I was so weak I thought I hadn’t any arms. But I had to go back to the flat to be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. And when I looked round, I got an idea. That top hat. If I took that along, and put it on Phil—why, you see, they would think the Mad Hatter had killed him! Nobody knew who the hat thief was. I didn’t want to get anybody else in trouble, and that way it was perfectly safe.”

  “The chief inspector,” said Dr. Fell, “will have no difficulty in understanding you. You needn’t elaborate. He had just finished outlining the same idea himself, as being the murderer’s line of thought, before you came in. What about the crossbow bolt?”

  “I—I left the bolt—you know where. You see, I’d never seen the damn thing before. I didn’t know it came from Bitton’s house. I simply assumed it was one of Phil’s possessions and couldn’t do anybody harm. I didn’t see the ‘Souvenir de Carcassonne,’ because—you know why. It was hidden.”

  Dalrye’s nostrils grew taut. His hands clenched on his knees and his voice went high. “But one thing I remembered before I left that flat. I remembered that manuscript in my pocket. I might have killed Phil. I might have been the lowest swine on earth, and I was pretty sure I was. But, by God! I wasn’t going to put dirty dollars in my pocket by selling that manuscript to Arbor now. It was in my pocket. But it had blood on it. I think I was thinking more about that than even about Phil. I wasn’t going to use that if I needed it to save me from being hanged. I remember, I took it o
ut. I was so wild that I was going to tear it up and take a handful of the pieces along to throw in Bitton’s face. But if I tore it up here— Oh, well. They’d find the pieces, and there wasn’t any use doing Phil dirt, even if I had killed him. Sounds funny, eh, from a murderer? I can’t help that. It’s the way I felt. I knew I was wasting time, but I touched a match to it and threw it in the grate. I had the top hat, squashed flat, under my coat, and I thought I’d attended to everything. Funny, too. I kept looking around that study, the way you do when you’re leaving a hotel room, and you wonder if you’ve left your toothbrush on the washstand, or something.”

  “You should have put back the fender in its place,” said Dr. Fell. “Nobody merely searching that flat would or could have shoved a solid iron fender round the way you did when you had your fight with Driscoll. Well?”

  “Then,” said Dalrye, reaching automatically after the whisky, “then I had the first of my two really horrible shocks. When I was just getting outside the door of the flat, I ran into the porter. If I had met him earlier, when I was carrying out Phil! I don’t know what I said. I said, ‘Ha, ha,’ or something of the sort, and told him what a good fellow he was, and for no reason at all I handed him half a crown. He walked out to the car with me.”

  “Son,” said Dr. Fell, with a sudden grunt, “you told an unnecessary lie today, and that car gave you away. When you were telling your story to us at the Tower this afternoon, you said you had never taken the car to the flat at all. You said when you left the flat you had to go to the garage and get it, and then start home. Still, I suppose you couldn’t say anything else. But when Mr. Hadley here explained this evening about your having the car there, as the porter told him— No matter. Then?”

  “I drove away. I was thinking until I thought my head would burst. But I believed I was safe now. I’d put the top hat on Phil, and stuffed his cap into my pocket. All I had to do was find a side lane somewhere down near the Tower, and pitch him out in the fog. I didn’t bother about fingerprints, for, as God is my judge, I’d never touched that crossbow bolt. And then, just as I’d laid my plans, and I was getting away from Bloomsbury, do you know what happened?”

  “Yes,” said Hadley. “You met General Mason.”

  “Met him? Met him? Do you think I’d have stopped if I’d seen him? The first thing I knew he’d hopped on the running-board, and there he was grinning at me, and saying what a godsend this was, and telling me to get over in the front seat, so that he had room to shove in beside me.

  “I stopped the car dead. I’ve read in books about how they feel when they think their hearts have stopped. I didn’t think that exactly; I felt as though the whole car started to collapse under me. I couldn’t move. I tried to move, and my foot jumped so much on the accelerator that I stalled the car. Then I turned my head away and glared out the side as though I were looking at a tire, and I tried to swear at it, but I couldn’t seem to get my tongue up out of my throat.

  “Then the car got started somehow. I could hear the general talking, but I don’t remember anything he said. He was in a very good humor, I know, and that seemed to make it worse. All I thought of, just as though I saw words written on a board, was, ‘Come on, parson-face; steady, parson-face; keep your nerve, parson-face,’ and I thought that Phil’s friends would stare if they saw old parson-face now. I wanted to yell, and slap him on the back and say, ‘Glance under that rug in the rear seat, and see what a surprise old parson-face has for you, General.’

  “But I didn’t. I covered myself by cursing every car that passed so violently that even the general thought something must be wrong. I was headed for destruction now, I could see that. We should go straight back to the Tower, and no power this side of hell could change it. Straight back. Excuse me a second—a drink. Funny this stuff doesn’t seem to have any effect. A few drinks will get me tight, usually.

  “I had, during that time, about twenty minutes to think and think hard. I’d thought it must be hours since I’d seen Phil lying dead there. But when I looked at my watch I couldn’t understand; it was only eight minutes past two. And all the time my brain was going like a machine-shop I was talking to the general—I don’t know what we talked about. It began to dawn on me that I had one chance. And that if I worked that chance I might have a real alibi.

  “You see? If I could get inside the Tower grounds, and dump the body somewhere without detection, no sane person would ever believe I had ridden from Town beside General Mason with a corpse in the rear of the car. It began to seem as though my worst danger might be my—well, my salvation. They would believe, it suddenly dawned on me, that Driscoll had never left the Tower.

  “I had to nerve myself for one last effort. And I was thankful I’d put on a bad humor and taken to cursing other cars, because now I told the general about the ‘fake’ telephone call that had lured me away; and I wondered what it was all about.

  “Then we were inside the Tower grounds as two-thirty struck. I had calculated it neatly, and I knew the place. If there were nobody else about as we went along Water Lane, I knew what I should do. You were quite right, Doctor, in saying that anybody would think of Traitors’ Gate as the place to hide a corpse on a foggy day. And this was the place, because I could stop there without suspicion.

  “You see?” Dalrye demanded, leaning forward eagerly. “I had to let the general out opposite the gate to the Bloody Tower. I waited until he was well up under the archway on his way to the King’s House, and then I acted. I opened the rear door, tossed the body over the rail, and was back in the car in a second, driving on.

  “But, my God! I cut it fine! The general, on his way up, remembered an errand or something in St. Thomas’s Tower, and he discovered the body. That—that’s about all, sir. There’s—there’s only one other thing. With this terrible thing over me, I’d forgotten about the money Phil had—the money I owed to— Well, I’d forgotten it, anyway. When the general sent me after the doctor, and the rest of it, I had to go up to my room to get something to steady my nerves. The reaction was too much. There was a letter on my table. I don’t remember opening it; I don’t even know why I opened it. I found myself standing with a brandy and soda in my hand, and the letter in front of my face. The letter said,” suddenly Dalrye gagged, as though he were swallowing medicine, “the letter said, ‘Don’t worry any more about it. It’s paid. Don’t mention this to my brother, and don’t be such a quixotic young fool again.’ It was signed ‘Lester Bitton.’”

  Dalrye got up out of his chair and faced them. He was flushed and his eyes burned brightly. There was a pause, and he had a curious expression of puzzled uncertainty.

  “I’m drunk!” he said, wonderingly. “I’m drunk. I hadn’t noticed it, not till this minute. Old parson-face is drunk. Never mind.

  “Lester Bitton got rid of what I owed, and never said a word.

  “And when you accused him tonight—and he shot himself—you see why I had to tell you.”

  He stood straight, a little wrinkle between his brows.

  “I told you I was a swine,” he went on in an even voice, “but I’m not so bad as that. I know what it means. It means the rope. They won’t believe me, of course, after what I did to cover myself; and I can’t blame them. They shoot you out of a door, and it’s all over in a few seconds. Don’t mind old parson-face. I can’t think how I came to be so drunk. I don’t drink much, as a rule. What was I saying? Oh, yes. If you hadn’t blamed it on Major Bitton, if you gave out that you hadn’t been able to find out who the murderer was, I’d have kept quiet. Why not? I love Sheila. Some day I might have— Never mind. I’m not going to let you think I’m pitying myself. It’s only that I appreciate people who are kind to me. I never had much kindness. People all thought I was too much of a joke. But, by God! Old joke parson-face had the police guessing, didn’t he?” Momentarily there was a blaze in his face. “Old—joke—parson-face!” said Robert Dalrye.

  The fire was sinking now. Dalrye, his hand clenched, stared across the dusky room. He
had spoken for a long time. There was a faint hint of dawn in the windows towards the garden; Mayfair lay quiet and dead.

  Hadley rose quietly from his chair.

  “Young man,” he said, “I have an order for you. Go out into one of the other rooms and sit down. I’ll call you back in a moment. I want to speak to my friends. There is one other thing. On no account speak a word to anybody until you are called back. Do you hear?”

  “Oh, well,” said Dalrye. “Oh, well. Go ahead and phone for your Black Maria, or whatever you use. I’ll wait. By the way, there was something I didn’t tell you. I’m afraid I nearly scared that poor devil Arbor into a fit. I didn’t mean to. I was in the Warders’ Hall on the other side of the Byward Tower, where the visitors were detained, when he was coming out from your conference. And I was talking to your sergeant, only about ten feet away from Arbor. He hadn’t recognized my voice before, but I was afraid he did then. It nearly killed him. I say! I feel as though I had no legs. I hope I’m not staggering. That would be a devil of a way to go to jail. Excuse me.”

  With his shoulders back, he moved with careful steps towards the door.

  “Well?” asked Dr. Fell, when he had gone.

  Hadley stood before the dying fire, a stiff military figure against the white marble mantelpiece, and in his hand were the notes he had taken of Dalrye’s recital. Hadley hesitated. There were lines drawn slantwise under his eyes; he shut his eyes now.

  “I told you,” he said, quietly, “I was getting old. I am sworn to uphold the law. But—I don’t know. I don’t know. The older I get, the more I don’t know. Ten years ago I should have said, ‘Too bad,’ and— You know what I’m thinking, Fell. No jury would ever believe that boy’s testimony. But I do.”

  “And without speaking of Lester Bitton,” said the doctor, “the case can remain unsolved. Good man, Hadley! You know what I think. If this is a tribunal, will you put it up to a vote?”