“There must be
some
key to the affair.” Inspector Cadover turned from the window and stared at his former colleague. But his eyes retained their distant focus, so that Appleby had the sensation of being some remote and inanimate object, just visible on the horizon commanded from this eyrie high in New Scotland Yard. “There’s a key to every murder, after all.”
“Undoubtedly there is.” Appleby’s agreement was placid. “Only sometimes it gets buried with the corpse.”
“Rubbish!” Cadover’s nerves were frayed. “And the corpse isn’t buried yet, anyhow. They’re still on a rather elaborate PM.
“You see, this Honoria Clodd had been dead at least three days when they found her, and I’m anxious to narrow down the time all I can.
“Of course, it mayn’t be murder at all. Superficially it looked just like another dismal head-in-the-oven affair.
“But if that’s so, then Honoria was a much more economically-minded girl than one would take her for, all other facts considered. There she was in the kitchen of this discreet country cottage of hers, and her head was cosily in the oven, sure enough.
“But the gas was turned off – and only her fingerprints were on the tap.”
“I see.” Appleby’s interest appeared not very lively. “Could she have reached that tap from where she lay?”
“Certainly she could. And the thing is just conceivable as suicide. She
may
have turned off the tap herself. Not really out of economy, of course. That’s only a joke.”
“Ah,” said Appleby.
“She may have thought better of killing herself at the last moment, as so many of them do. And so she may have reached out desperately at the last moment and managed to turn the tap. Indeed, the position of the arm rather suggested it.”
“And this cottage was where she lived?”
“Not as a regular thing. Although she was pretty well retired from the stage, she had rather a flashy flat here in town. The cottage was there on a lock-up, occasional weekend basis. The sort of cottage where you take down your provisions in tins, do all your own chores, and have absolutely no questions asked.
“A man worked in the garden on Wednesdays. I doubt if he’d have been welcome about the place at other times.”
“The suggestion,” said Appleby, “appears to be that Miss Clodd–”
“Mrs Jolly. She was married – quite legally – to a nebulous person called Jolly. He was, I think, essential to her way of life.”
“Husbands sometimes are.”
“You misunderstand me.” Cadover’s solemn gloom grew. “The woman had more money than she ought to have had, even if she was quite thrivingly no better than she ought to have been.
“Unless I’ve got it all wrong, she was not merely immoral, but criminal as well. Jolly turned up at awkward moments–”
“And decidedly belied his name. In fact, a particularly filthy kind of blackmail.” Appleby stood up. “Well, it’s nice to hear that things are still going on as usual. And you’ve got a murderer to hunt for, all right.
“It’s overwhelmingly probable that your Honoria was liquidated by somebody who couldn’t afford to lose either his reputation or any more money. Don’t forget, in the excitement of hanging the fellow, to get the virtuous Jolly locked up at the same time. And now I must be off.”
“And, mind you, there were signs of a struggle.” Cadover was following Appleby doggedly to the door. “Bruises in various places, broken fingernails, rather a nasty–”
“Quite so.” Appleby, with his hand on the doorknob, drew back at the sound of a sharp rap from outside. Hard upon it, a young man burst precipitately into the room.
“I say, sir–” The young man checked himself, recognised Appleby, and hurried on. “They’ve found something.
A key. And it nearly got buried with the corpse
.”
Inspector Cadover sat down heavily at his desk. John Appleby, looking considerably less retired from the CID than he had done thirty seconds before, was staring at the contents of a small box which the young man had produced.
“A Yale key,” he said, “–and an odd little bit of twisted wire.”
The young man nodded. “Just found by the post-mortem wallahs in Honoria’s tummy.” With the confidence of one whose cheerful grin operates some inches above a most respectable school tie, the young man glanced from Appleby to his chief.
“A flood of light.” Appleby was immobile and his lips scarcely moved. Only his hand had gone out and, very gently, his fingers were at play upon the little twist of thin, spring-like wire.
“You mean that this – this lunacy positively improves matters?” Cadover had risen, taken three strides to his window, and was contemplating a considerable area of London with every appearance of extreme malevolence.
“There
ought
to be a flood of light in it. Remember Dupin?”
“Dupin?” The young man looked up as one who delights in the fruits of an extensive literary education. “You mean Poe’s Frog?”
“Exactly. Poe’s Frog. Poe’s immortal and archetypal French detective. Look out, he said, for what has never happened before, and pin your faith on that.
“Well, here it is. Never before, I’ll be bound, has Scotland Yard found in the stomach of a presumably murdered woman a Yale key and an inch and a half of twisted wire. It’s an uncommonly interesting thing.”
“To be sure it is.” Cadover was suddenly convinced and hearty. “It’s a
most
interesting thing. And just the sort of thing to interest
you
. Now, my dear Appleby, if you should care to look into it, to poke around–”
Appleby shook his head. “The doctors have done that for us. And if your mystery is ever to be solved” – he tapped the box–“it will be now, and on the strength of what is before our noses.”
A knock at the door interrupted them, and a uniformed sergeant thrust his head into the room. “Beg pardon, sir – but we have Sir Urien Pendragon below, and wanting to see whoever is concerned with the case of the late Mrs Jolly.”
“Good heavens! Well, show him up.” Cadover was very reasonably staggered at the august scientist’s name. “Appleby, do you think he can have been one of–”
“I haven’t a doubt of it.” Appleby returned his hat to the peg from which he had taken it a few minutes before. “By the way, have you a line on the lately bereaved Jolly?”
“He ought to be presenting himself any minute.”
“Capital. I really think I’ll stay. Just for ten minutes or so, until the affair is cleared up.”
Breathing hard, Cadover nodded to the young man. “Clear out,” he said. “A person like Sir Urien may take two of us. But he certainly won’t take three.”
“Poor Mrs Jolly,” said Sir Urien, “was a near neighbour of mine in the country. We were quite intimate friends. So naturally I am much distressed.”
“And you feel that you may have valuable information to give?” Cadover’s reaction to his visitor’s eminence was to turn eminently official and grim.
“Well, yes – although the matter is rather a delicate one.” Sir Urien adjusted his eyeglass and for a moment let his fingers stray over his beautifully trimmed grey beard.
“The fact is that there was – um – almost a sentimental element in the relationship – on poor Mrs Jolly’s part, that is to say. I was really afraid that a distorted view of it might affect her relations with her husband, who is a most violent and ungoverned man. They were already on very ill terms, and indeed rarely saw each other.”
“We have some ideas on
that
.” Cadover tapped his writing-pad. “And you say, Sir Urien, that you have been abroad?”
“I have. It was indeed a sense of this possible awkwardness that made me decide to go abroad some ten days ago. I went to my friends the Mountroyals, at Mentone” – Sir Urien paused as if to let this impressive information sink in – “and I intended to stay for some three weeks.
“But government business brought me home a couple of days ago, and I heard of the shocking tragedy only this morning.”
Appleby, who had been standing silently by the window during these preliminary exchanges, suddenly spoke. “May I ask, Sir Urien, if during your holiday you were constantly in the society of your friends?”
“Most certainly.” Sir Urien looked blandly surprised. “Charles Mountroyal and I are very old friends. Arcades ambo would be a just description of us.”
“Thank you.” Appleby appeared to relapse into abstraction.
“Sir Urien, the facts as we know them are these.” Cadover’s tone was quite expressionless. “The body of Mrs Jolly – or Miss Honoria Clodd – was discovered yesterday morning by a hiker who, having lost his way and got no reply at the door, was sufficiently curious to peer through the kitchen window.
“She had died of coal-gas poisoning at some period which could not have been less than three, or more than six days previously.”
“Dear me, I am more than ever distressed. Had I not been abroad, I might have done something to prevent so rash an act.”
“We think it was murder.”
“You appal me. But I am not wholly surprised. Her husband is unbalanced – is subject, indeed, to overwhelming fits of pathological jealousy. And while one must admire, as in Shakespeare’s
Othello
, the devotion from which such a passion takes its rise…”
“Sir Urien, I have to tell you that our information in this matter is quite different. As we see it, Mrs Jolly was not a virtuous woman. And she and her husband conspired to exploit the fact in a manner that would have brought them well within the grasp of the criminal law.
“Jolly posed as the outraged discoverer of his wife’s infidelities, and then accepted money as the price of his silence and, I suppose, complaisance.
“Your picture of an outraged husband committing murder in a fit of uncontrolled jealousy is therefore nonsense.”
“You pain me inexpressibly. You horrify me.” Sir Urien, who had certainly gone a little pale, nevertheless again stroked his beard comfortably enough. “And if I may say so, Inspector, I am much disturbed by the fact of a man in your position displaying so strange an ignorance of human nature.
“Suppose – as I do not for a moment admit – the position to be as you describe. It is tolerably well known that a man who exploits a woman after the fashion you mention is particularly likely to react with an insane fury should that woman import any element of – um – genuine regard into a relationship initially entered into for gain.”
Cadover, thus blandly schooled, breathed harder than ever. And once more Appleby stirred by the window.
“That,” he said, “is perfectly true. I see, Sir Urien, that you possess some insight into the minds of the criminal classes. You know this fellow Jolly?”
Sir Urien hesitated. “We have met. He is not a person whom I should wish to admit to my familiar acquaintance.”
“I believe it might be interesting if you met him again.”
And Cadover, taking the hint, leant forward at his desk and pressed a bell.
Jolly was a grey and clammy creature, at once insubstantial and acutely disagreeable.
“We appreciate that you were not often in your wife’s society.” Cadover had the air of gazing straight through the human cobweb before him.
“But it will at least not be difficult to prove that she was your only visible means of support. She had money, Mr Jolly, and you knew how she came by it.
“I suggest that you need not look far” – and Cadover glanced quickly at the silent Sir Urien Pendragon – “in order to recall one quite considerable source of income.”
“I tell you, there was no vice in Honoria.” Jolly licked his lips and looked sidelong at Sir Urien with what appeared to be furtive fear and fury.
“There was no vice in her, at all. I don’t say she didn’t have some very pleasant gentlemen friends. And I don’t say she didn’t have presents.”
“Might it have occurred to her to borrow a car?”
It was Appleby who spoke. Quite suddenly, he had taken the middle of the room.
“I don’t say it wouldn’t, and I don’t say it would.” Jolly, thoroughly wary and alarmed, seemed to find reassurance in this formula.
“In fact, was there not a particular car? Rather a grand car–”
“I protest!” Sir Urien had risen to his feet. “In Mr Jolly’s interest I protest against this highly irregular interrogation. I demand that he be permitted to withdraw, and to answer no more questions except upon legal advice.”
“I have no objection in the world.” Appleby gently smiled – and simultaneously made a gesture that sent the spare Cadover with an agile bound to the door. “But with you yourself, Sir Urien, it is another matter.”
“She told her own story.” Cadover and Appleby were again alone, and it was now the latter who, as he spoke, gazed out far across London.
“As to whether there was vice in Honoria, we have our own opinion. But there was certainly brains. And guts, of a sort. She knew she was being murdered, and she was determined that her murderer should pay.
“As for Pendragon, it was the demand for his car that was at once a last straw and an inspiration. They were near neighbours; she had pestered him to have the use of this grand car; he went abroad – and posted her the key of the particular garage in which it was housed.
“At a guess, I should say it was at a little remove from his house. Or perhaps he had sent away the servants and the place was deserted: that will be something for you to find out.
“He knew the wretched woman’s mentality; had good reason to know it. She was selfish in her pleasures, and went off to possess herself of the gorgeous new prize alone.
“She unlocked the garage and entered. She got into the car and slammed the door. In a matter of seconds, I fancy, she knew that she was done for – that she had shut herself up in a brilliantly contrived lethal chamber.
“Pendragon was a scientist. It wasn’t difficult for him to arrange that when the door of that car shut several other things happened simultaneously. The doors locked themselves.
“I have no doubt that the door of the garage – probably of the roll-up sort – slid down and presented a blank and innocent face to the world. And already coal-gas was pouring into the car.
“Honoria struggled, trying to smash her way out through what would certainly be a virtually unbreakable glass. The signs of that struggle were on her body when it was found.