Death Knocks Three Times (21 page)

“Blackmail! Dear me, and I never suspected it. Clara certainly knew how to consume her own smoke. That must have made quite a hole in her fortune.”

You had to hand it to her, Crook acknowledged, she could take it on the chin.

“It’s what I was saying,” he continued. “No one ever came into the open and accused Miss B. of murder, but someone knew and saw to it that she paid. Now again, no one’s come into court and said she pushed her sister over the balcony, but if someone didn’t know, they had a pretty shrewd notion, and decided she should pay again. Clear so far?”

“Perfectly. And you know the identity of the person?”

“Not so much choice, is there? Someone who cared for Miss Isabel. That cuts Marlowe right out, because he cared mostly for what she had. I’d lay all the cash this case is going to cost me he came down to see what he could get out of the old lady; that’s why I don’t think it was him wrote the anonymous letters. He’s not the sort of chap to waste time beating about the bush. If he wanted cash he’d come plump out and say so. As I dare say he had.”

“Isabel hadn’t many friends on the spot. There was Locket, of course …”

“I wondered when any one was goin* to remember her. Maybe she wasn’t too happy about the accident, either. Anyhow, she left just afterwards, and though she’s back in the place, I don’t notice her visiting at Greenglades much. And John Sherren don’t believe it was an accident …”

“And neither do I,” wound up Miss Pettigrew harshly.

“And you don’t think she chucked herself overboard?”

“If Isabel had intended to take her own life, of which I am by no means convinced, there were other methods she might have employed. I remember her speaking to me once of the effects of an overdose of aspirin. Indeed, after her death I believe an untouched bottle of a hundred tablets was found among her possessions.”

“Takes some nerve to go on taking a hundred aspirins,” suggested Crook. “Prussic acid ‘ud be quicker.”

“But perhaps less easy to obtain,” observed Miss Pettigrew. “Still, I cannot believe that Isabel would fling herself into space. Mr. Crook, do you believe in such a thing as indirect murder?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Crook kindly. ” ‘Course I see what you’re getting at, but you do remember what I told you about proof.”

“And had you considered that Clara’s death may be an act of vengeance for what we may, between ourselves, regard as the murder of her sister?”

“I’ve told you what I think,” said Crook. “It was like the Colonel’s—a boomerang. And if you know of any neater way of committing murder, I’ll buy it.”

“Mr. Crook, I should be greatly obliged if you would explain your theory regarding Colonel Sherren’s death. It might elucidate your observations about a boomerang, which at present leave me completely in the dark.”

“I’ll tell you. To begin with, little Johnny ain’t the villain of the piece. Not the murdering kind. Too much imagination, see? The chaps who commit murder are the ones that don’t see beyond the actual crime. Arthur Crook on Psychology in Twelve Lessons. All that matters to them is the elimination of X. All their imagination goes into the means toward that end. They can’t see beyond the end. And when they’ve done their stuff they’re like chaps in a blind alley. They’ve chased their victim down to the end and there they can club him or stamp on him with their hobnailed boots, but they haven’t thought how they’re going to get out. Now, there’s two ways of gettin’ out of a blind alley. One is to kick down the wall in front of you, and the other is to go back the way you came. A lot of them try that way and find the gentleman in blue waiting for them. Even if he ain’t, there’s long odds some busybody will see ‘em coming out. Most of ‘em try to kick down the wall, but even then they can’t be sure what’s on the other side. They may run slap into the back door of the jail. And that’s what happened in the Colonel’s death or I am a Dutchman.”

“You mean someone baited the trap and never thought …”

Crook picked her up neatly. “Never thought he might get caught up in it himself. In fact, he never thought about the consequences at all. The important thing was to get X out of the way, and it was a simple job to unhook the lid of the bath.”

“Are you referring to Bligh?” asked Miss Pettigrew. “He says he had no notion he would inherit.”

“I dare say he was right. Though, mind you, if it was a choice between John Sherren and Bligh, I’d back the old man.”

“Surely,” argued Miss Pettigrew, “it is very strange that on the one night that his nephew was in the house the disaster should occur. Surely you agree with that?”

“Never,” said Crook, emphatically. “I mean, he may not be the sort of chap that gets degrees and wins scholarships, but he’d got some brains. Must have or he couldn’t churn out even that stuff the way he does. And it ‘ud be too much of a coincidence for the thing to happen the one night he was under the old boy’s roof. Everyone, simply everyone, would point a finger at him. Now if Bligh meant to put the old man underground he’d have to wait for a night when there was a choice of criminals; and other things bein’ equal, most people ‘ud follow your example and plump for Johnny.”

“Mr. Crook, if it was not Mr. Sherren and it was not Bligh, who was the criminal on that occasion?” That was the voice Miss Pettigrew had always used to recalcitrant pupils, and Crook, hearing it, grinned involuntarily and thanked Heaven he’d had precious little education himself.

“The only other person it could have been, the third person in the house that night,” he retorted triumphantly.

“The third person? The Colonel?” Miss Pettigrew gave an impression of a lady who suspects that her companion—no gentleman—is under the influence.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” said Crook, pleasantly.

“Surely an extraordinary way to commit suicide,” murmured Miss Pettigrew. “Why not turn on the gas? I understand one can get a guaranteed result for two shillings.”

“Grand idea,” beamed Crook. “Only two things against it. One, there wasn’t any gas in the house; and two, the Colonel wasn’t plottin’ to take his own life. You will keep forgettin’ about the boomerang. Now, you listen to me, sugar. I was up there. I’d met the old boy. Mind you, I’ve a great respect for private enterprise. It takes chances no civil servant would dare consider, and it don’t mind what it pays to prove it was a million miles away on the night in question. Colonel Sherren was a grand old chap, but he was as mad as a hatter, I tell you, I was up there. I know. My standards ain’t very high, but he wouldn’t have passed even by them. He was mad and he had no memory. Those are the two

things you have to remember. Then—I was at the inquest. A lot of play was made of the quarrel between uncle and nephew on the Tuesday night. There’s no doubt about it—our Johnny with his finicky ways was just the sort of chap to drive the old boy right off his rocker, and he was tottering in any case. I talked to Bligh, as well as heard him in the witness-stand. The one thing that gets John Sherren’s dander up is makin’ fun of his work. I dare say they’re all clap-trap, but those books of his are like a young mother’s first baby, so far as he’s concerned. The Colonel thought his nephew’s books were tripe and he told him so. John tried to keep his temper; indeed, the worst he said was that when the old boy was dead and gone there might be critics who’d find some kind of worth in them. The operative phrase, mark you, was dead and gone. That shoved the old boy halfway into the tomb right away. And he was furious. When I’m dead and gone, fumes the old boy, this nincompoop of a nephew of mine will be peacocking round telling everyone what a fine chap he is. Shakespeare, he’ll say? He’ll do. Peter Cheyney? Pass in a crowd. But I’m John Sherren. Just because some old duffer doesn’t understand what I’m talking about … See how the poison works? I’ll get even with him, says the old man, and he sits around on his lonesome hatching his plot. I’m a better man than you are, Gunga Din. So sure you’re going to see me lowered into the grave, and you giving yourself the airs of a Kipling. So up the old chap goes and unhooks the lid, and then he tells his nevvy there’ll be hot water for his special benefit the next morning, so he needn’t go back to his attics and tell his landlady he’s been visiting the outposts of civilization, because you can have hot water in Chipping Magna just as easily as you can in Maida Vale West. See?”

“You mean he deliberately intended to murder his nephew?” “I don’t suppose he thought of it like that. Just a huge joke, showing him which of them’s the best man. It’s what I told you, these near-loonies don’t think of the next step. He got as far as seeing little Johnny hop into the tub and give a tug to the loofah— no, don’t tell me he wouldn’t use another fellow’s loofah, because the old boy wouldn’t think of that—and down comes the lid. And, so far as the Colonel’s concerned, down comes the curtain. It’s like a play. When it’s over how many of the audience stop to think of the actors as people with lives outside the theater? Not

one in a thousand. The play’s over and so far as they’re concerned the actors are dead. Want any more?”

“Please go on,” said Miss Pettigrew. “It’s not that I don’t follow you absolutely, but you tell it all with such verve.”

John Sherren would have turned purple at this juncture and changed the subject, but Crook was far too tough even to notice th’) sarcasm.

“John pats his rosy cheeks and washes his lily-white hands in the pretty painted basin, same like me, though I bet he used scented soap, and he packs his bag and tips Bligh and says good-bye to his uncle, and down south he comes. He never notices anything unusual about the bath, and that lazy old devil, Bligh, doesn’t either. That night the Colonel goes up for his weekly all-over dip; in he pops and swooshes like a walrus and then he reaches out for the loofah and whang! down comes the lid on his head, the lid he unfastened and forgot all about, and he’s out for the count.”

“You really suggest he would overlook the fact that he had unfastened the hooks less than twenty-four hours earlier?” Miss Pettigrew looked the picture of incredulity.

“Now listen to me, sugar. You’ve met me a few times since this show opened, but say I’d gone back to town—or you had—the next morning. Next time we met would you have remembered me?”

The old spinster smiled grimly. “I fancy you seldom have to complain of that kind of forgetfulness, Mr. Crook.”

“Meanin’ that if you met me an seon hence down below you wouldn’t have forgotten me?”

“Meaning precisely that.”

“Then get a skinful of this. The next morning, the next morning, mark you, after all our interestin’ confabulations the night before, the Colonel wanted to know who the devil I was, what I was doin’ in his house, who let me in and how the blazes long did I mean to stay? It took Bligh a good minute or more to bring me back to his mind. Now, are you going to tell me that a chap with that sort of memory is going to remember a detail like unlatching the lid of a bath? Y’see, I dare say he wasn’t even surprised to find his nephew at the breakfast table, and if his plan had worked he’d very likely have rounded on Bligh and asked him why the devil he’d been so careless, instead of making sure everything was hunky-dory before dear little Johnny took off his dear little vest.”

“A very ingenious theory,” acknowledged Miss Pettigrew. “It would be even more impressive if you had an atom of proof to support it.”

“You don’t think there’s anything queer about the old boy changing the habits of a lifetime and providin’ hot water to tempt his nevvy into the bath? First time in, say, thirty years, and only made up his mind at the eleventh hour?”

“You may be right.” Miss Pettigrew prided herself on her sense of justice. “Then your verdict would be suicide?”

“Suicide argues a deliberate act on the part of the corpse. No, I’m a lawyer, but I have to admit I don’t knoAv Avhat you’d call it. I dare say a moralist would call it the mills of God. But whatever it is, the verdict in Miss Bond’s case is the same.”

Miss Pettigrew looked staggered. “The same, Mr. Crook?”

“I warned you before, don’t try throwing dust in my eyes. Who to our certain knowledge had pheno-barbitone? Miss Bond. No one’s been able to show that any one else at the tea party possessed any. And where did she keep it? In her bag. And what does it look like? Saccharine as near as makes no difference.”

“But—she didn’t put any saccharine into her own cup. She gave hers to Mr. Marlowe and before she could stop him Mr. Sherren put what we assumed to be saccharine into her tea.”

“So he did,” aQ;reed Crook. “And then he said he threw the empty bottle in a waste-paper basket, but eventually it was found in his pocket, nicely hidden in the hem. And there was a newly mended hole in the lining. And he didn’t put anything out of his bottle into his cup of tea. Oh, yes, the police noticed that all right. But, as I’m sure you noticed. Miss B. didn’t put any of the contents of her bottle into her cup either, and when her little bottle was found it was empty. Don’t that add up to something?”

“You are so much better at arithmetic than I,” Miss Pettigrew flattered him.

“And there’s one other point. Don’t it strike you as queer that a lady who never takes saccharine should have it so handy, when she didn’t even know she was goin’ to have visitors that night?”

“Dear me!” said Miss Pettigrew. “You don’t miss much, Mr. Crook, do you? I suppose you have it all worked out from start to finish?”

“I don’t know so much about the start,” said Crook. “But I could

fill in the gaps at the end, tell that blundering Inspector why he couldn’t find the empty bottle in the waste-paper basket and how it was John Sherren let them find the tablets in his overcoat.”

Miss Pettigrew nodded her long horse head till Crook felt that in another moment he’d put his hand in his pocket and offer her a lump of sugar on its palm.

“I should have guessed, too,” she acknowledged. “Clara never did anything without a reason, and when she insisted on our going up that night while she remained behind with her nephew I should have put two and two together.” She stopped nodding her head at last and said: “And what now?”

“Your move,” said Crook, briskly.

“I suppose,” said Miss Pettigrew, “you wouldn’t care to give me a clue?”