Death-Watch (24 page)

“She didn’t concoct the devilishly imaginative scheme of using a clock-hand as a weapon. She didn’t see its possibilities as a knife, and creep in there, and patiently wait on the off-chance that a prying policeman would pay her a visit in the middle of the night. It’s that clock-hand, Hadley, that you can’t associate with Eleanor or anything you know of Eleanor—either as a kleptomaniac or a murderess.”

Hadley was unimpressed.

“The defence is out of order,” he said. “If you’ll listen to my explanation … What the devil!”

He sat up straight and peered round. From the hallway outside there was a sound of commotion; trampling footfalls, the clash of voices, a sharp sound like a slap, and a thud against the door. Kicking it open, a flustered Sergeant Preston had in his grip a woman who wrenched loose and glared at them … Then Lucia Handreth stopped and stared at the articles on the bed.

I
T WAS TOO LATE TO CONCEAL THEM,
although Hadley made a quick effort to do so without disturbing any fingerprints that might be there. The skull-watch and the bracelet were in plain sight. Lucia Handreth’s eyes moved swiftly to the open panel in the wall; then they became veiled.

“I brought her here right enough, sir,” Preston announced, in some satisfaction. The red marks of fingers showed across a cheek dull-pale with anger, and he straightened his tie. “She tried to give me something about her name not being Carver, but you told me to bring her in here—”

“You bloody
fool
!” roared Hadley, jarred out of his legal calm. He stumbled up from the bed. “ Didn’t you know—?”

“Not by sight, sir,” Preston interposed during his retreat. “Berts told me a good-looking girl about her height. I wasn’t here last night, and—”

“Where was Betts? He should have been out there to see …” Then Hadley seemed to remember he had sent Betts to look for Carver. “All right,” he added, gruffly. “Say it wasn’t your fault. Get out now. You’d better stay, Miss Handreth.”

Melson had been studying her. Her colour had been high when she entered; she breathed heavily, and the fur collar of her coat was disarranged. Now she smoothed herself, with only a small gleam of anger making yellowish the clear brown eyes. And she did not attempt to pass over the objects she had seen on the bed. After adjusting her hat she looked at him levelly.

“So it was our Nell, after all,” she said, in a contemptuous voice. “It was. Why do you say, ‘after all’?”

“Oh—well. Reasons. I suppose it’s no good keeping quiet now, although I didn’t think you sleuths would have much difficulty getting the truth out of poor old Chris Paull. Did you find the other clock-hand, or what made you so sure?”

There was material in this remark which made Melson jump. “The truth out of poor old Chris Paull?” He hoped his face had not betrayed him, for Hadley remained impassive and Dr. Fell poked absently at the floor with his cane. Lucia seemed to find the business mildly distasteful, and to speak without much curiosity. Her eyes wandered over the ornaments of the meagre room; her nostrils twitched, and she gave a faint shudder as at an unpleasant memory. When Hadley indicated a chair she appeared to hesitate about taking it. Then she shrugged, and sat down wearily.

“Poor old Don—” she burst out, the corners of her mouth drawing down. “And it won’t be pleasant, and it hasn’t been pleasant, for most of us. I’m glad you’ve been so quick about it. I shouldn’t have wanted to spend another night under the same roof with that

… that mad wild-cat. Oh, it’s mucky. But I didn’t want to tell you, you see, because it would have looked like spite or something, and I knew Chris would—under pressure. And then again I didn’t really
know …
What did Chris say?”

They saw that the pose of indifference was trembling over a powerful releasing of nervous tension, as she slowly realized the import of things. She had exaggerated her contempt on that, “I knew Chris would”; and a nerve jerked spasmodically in her arm.

“What did he say, Miss Handreth?” repeated Hadley, and reflectively examined his pipe. “About what particular thing do you mean? He told us a good deal, and he had rather a thick head this morning.”

“About getting Eleanor to stop that clock from …” She was a shrewd woman. Even as she spoke she caught the echo of a wrong inflection in Hadley’s remark, as at the ring of a false coin. “Let’s understand each other,” she added, sharply. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Before Hadley could reply Dr. Fell interrupted.

“We’re at a time for pretty plain speaking, Miss Handreth. So there’s no point in trying to be cute about extracting information from you. No, we don’t know what you’re talking about—but you’ve gone so far now that you’ve got to speak out. It will be none too good for your future legal career if you are accused of suppressing information. We talked to Paull, yes. If he knows anything about those clock-hands, he didn’t tell us, because we didn’t ask him. Come to think of it, we never even mentioned the fact that the murder was committed with a clock-hand … It was difficult enough to make him understand the rest of it without introducing that.”

“Then you mean,” she cried, “that you didn’t really find—”

“Oh, we found the short hand, the missing hand, right enough,” confirmed Dr. Fell. “It’s in that shoe-box over there. Show it to her, Hadley. You needn’t worry about the strength of the evidence. Now, then, Miss Handreth?”

She was silent for a time.

“To think,” she said, with a kind of savagery, “that after all the resolutions I made I did let the fool police make a fool of me, after all! Well, you had luck, that’s all. You …” She stared at the catdoll on the mantelpiece, and suddenly she began to laugh. “But the whole thing’s so
silly
! That is, if it hadn’t turned out horrible. It was a joke. Anybody but Eleanor would have seen that!” (Mirth, or tears, or terror, or all three? She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.) “Oh, Chris will tell you all about it. He told me the story before I overheard him telling her. I dare say he only told her because I wouldn’t sympathize with him, and said it was exactly like a difficulty in a Wodehouse story, and—Oh, well, I know I shouldn’t have laughed, but …

“Look here. Do you know why Chris went down to see old Sir Edwin? He thought he was in a horrible mess, and I gather that the old man is rather a terror. Well, it was
Chris
, to keep on the good side of a wealthy relative, who insisted on the old man ordering that clock from the finest craftsman in town when any hack would have done as well; Chris said he himself would present Sir Edwin with the clock. Everything would have been quite all right if it had been merely the question of paying for the clock as a business proposition. But the old man said no. He knows Carver, he’s tremendously keen on clocks and watches, so what they should do if Chris insisted on making him this gift, he said, was ‘return a favour from a master’ in proper form.

“Well. It seems that somebody in the Company of Clockmakers has for sale an old piece of junk, or whatnot, that Sir Edwin knew Carver admired. A watch of some sort. So let Chris buy it. Then, when Carver’s clock was finished—it was to be ready by today—in should come Sir Edwin, the old stuffed shirt, present Carver with the watch, receive the clock into his car, and take Carver down to Roxmoor to install it. Chris told me about this part openly, but the rest was in deepest confidence …”

“When was this?” demanded Hadley, making rapid notes.

She was laughing again; and dangerously on the edge of hysteria. “There—no, four days ago; on the Monday … Oh, don’t you see how ridiculous it is? Chris has a good monthly income. But then last Sunday night the poor idiot got into a poker game at some club when he wasn’t in shape to tell a full house from two pair, and got rid of everything with an overdraft at the bank to boot. He had a whacking big sum coming to him on Saturday of this week— tomorrow. But in the meantime he couldn’t afford fifty shillings for the watch, much less fifty pounds or whatever it was. When he was in such a stew I said, ‘My dear fathead, why not do the obvious thing? Get this watch, explain your difficulties, and give the chap who owns it a post-dated cheque for Saturday. He knows Sir Edwin and he’ll understand.” Of course Chris wouldn’t hear of it. He said the owner of the watch was a crony of old Edwin’s; and if the old man ever heard he was stony, and learned why, then there’d be bad trouble, and it was trouble he was trying to smooth over by buying the clock. And so on. You know …

“I tell you it was so absurd! I said, ‘Well, the clock’ll be finished by Thursday or Friday.’ I said, ‘Your only hope is for a burglar to come in and pinch it, but hell need a crane and a lorry to go off with it.’ Then he got his back up … Then it was Wednesday morning, the morning of the day he went away, that I heard him telling Eleanor, also in strictest confidence …”

Hadley, like one who sees an answer to a hitherto impossible question, tried to suppress his excitement when he demanded:

“It was Wednesday night the hands were stolen? Yes! And she didn’t hear of Paull’s difficulty until Wednesday; in other words, until
after
the clock had been moved from its exposed position into Carver’s room?”

“Yes.”

“Go on. Exactly what was said about it?”

“I didn’t hear all of it. Chris pinched my own words, without telling her where he heard them, about his being done for and that all he could hope for was a burglar with a crane and a lorry. I wouldn’t have paid any attention—except it struck me all of a sudden that that little devil was actually taking it seriously! I could tell it by her voice. That’s Eleanor. That’s Eleanor’s sense of humour,” Lucia cried, rather wildly. “She said, ‘Oh, it needn’t be as bad as all that.’ Then Chris mumbled something in his self-pitying way, and said, without much meaning, ‘Well, all I can say is that I’d
give
fifty pounds to the burglar who’d do something about that clock.’ And instantly Eleanor said, ‘Do you mean that?’—It was all I heard.”

“It was enough,” said Hadley.

Something like a groan came from Dr. Fell. The doctor put his big head in his hands and ruffled the hair at his temples. Hadley, regarding him as though in an absent-minded fashion, drove in his words like nails.

“‘Can you reconcile the theft of those clock-hands with anything we know of Eleanor?’” he repeated. ‘“Why were both hands of the clock stolen? Why were they stolen on Wednesday night when it was locked up, rather than Tuesday night when it was exposed?’ You said the answer would be simple, and it is. Fell, the whole case is complete and as blazing clear as daylight. The defence hasn’t a leg to stand on.”

“Humph, yes. Thanks very much, Miss Handreth. That,” said Dr. Fell, dully, “has unquestionably torn it. Thanks very much. It may interest you to know that for the first time in your legal career you will have succeeded in sending somebody to the gallows.”

Her eyes widened, and over them spread a glaze of fear. She had difficulty with her words when she said:

“Do you mean you have been tricking me
all
along? O my God! I wouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t been sure you … you said … If what I told you has made you alter your opinion …”

“You haven’t altered my opinion in the least. You’ve only confirmed the opinion of the only person who matters.”

“You—you don’t think,” she said, breathlessly, “I’d lie about—”

“No.”

“Please understand my position,” she urged, and began to beat her fist on the arm of the chair. “Could you expect me to keep silent, could you expect me to do anything else with a woman like that at my elbow and thinking about God knows what; with Don, who’s wrapped up in her and has had enough horrible trouble already with his father’s …! What could I do?”

“You have done exactly right, Miss Handreth,” said Hadley, with some curtness, “except that if you had told us this last night you would have saved a great deal of trouble …”

“In front of Don? Not likely! Besides, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything until you began talking about Gamridge’s and the robbery and murder there. Then I thought I saw the whole thing.” She shivered. “ May I go now? Living—living is a little more complicated than fancied.”

She rose, wearily, and Hadley rose with her.

“There are just two more questions I wish to ask you,” said Hadley, consulting his notebook. “First, did you know that Eleanor Carver ever had any tendencies towards kleptomania?”

A hesitation. “I’ve been waiting for that. Yes. I wondered why nobody mentioned it last night, especially Mrs. Steffins. I heard it from her. The old witch hates me, of course, but every time she had a row with Eleanor she had to talk to somebody about it. Well.”

Hadley glanced over at Dr. Fell. “Finally,” he went on, “do you have any positive information as to whether Eleanor knew there was a police officer interested in somebody in this house?”

“Yes. I mentioned it myself. One day last week, I’ve forgotten which, Eleanor and I were walking through the Fields, and I saw Mr. Busy sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper. I was in a foul temper about something then; and, though I’d resolved not to say anything about Ames, it rather burst out. I said something like: ‘Watch your step. There’s the Great Detective himself in one of his famous disguises.’”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing much. She looked round at him, and wanted to know how I knew. But I caught myself up then, and just said I thought I remembered seeing him in court somewhere. Then I laughed and said it was a joke.”

Hadley shut his notebook. “Thank you. That will be all, I think. I must caution you, remember, to say nothing to anybody yet. It will be only a matter of an hour or two, but—”

When she had gone, dispiritedly, Hadley did not speak during a time while he ran through his notes. Then he glanced up.

“Yes,” he said, “forgive me a little personal vindictiveness in this business. I admit that; it’s a clan affair. A member of the Force, in case you’ve forgotten it, was murdered; a man who carried no weapon was stabbed in the back. I shall take pleasure in hanging the killer.

“Now let me tell you what happened last night. That girl had the clock-hands in her possession; inside the secret panel, which she thought was safe. She wasn’t looking for trouble. She had an appointment with Hastings on the roof—and she went up to keep that appointment, according to her own testimony, at a quarter to twelve.