Authors: Gladys Mitchell
‘Good heavens, man, be quiet!’ shouted Alastair, the veins standing out visibly on his forehead. ‘You—you horrify me beyond measure.’
‘And rightly, sir. That’s what I’m saying. It would horrify anybody, wouldn’t it? See?’
The inspector permitted himself a fleeting smile, and continued, with scarcely a pause:
‘Now, look at the other side of it. Two young men—very young, very high-spirited—both under a strain following on the death of Mountjoy—what more likely than that they should think of playing a rather unpleasant practical joke, eh? The dummy figure, the Guy Fawkes mask, yes, and that ridiculous silk net arrangement on the head—why, it is exactly the sort of thing two young fellows would think of! I’ve got two young sons of my own studying at London University, and I know exactly
the sort of thing young fellows think funny. And then, again——’
‘Oh, very well, very well,’ snarled Alastair. ‘If that’s the police view, I can’t help it, I suppose. After all, no harm’s been done, that’s one thing.’
‘It is this Mountjoy business that has got on your nerves, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ said the inspector soothingly. ‘Now, that’s a matter which
does
need to be carefully investigated. No practical joke there.’
‘Well, now, about your daughter, Bing,’ interposed Sir Joseph. ‘Is she in a fit state to be interrogated? You see, the circumstances of her accident, although totally unlike those which caused the death of Mountjoy——’ He broke off, as though expecting that Alastair would ask a question, but the latter did nothing of the kind, and merely answered carelessly:
‘Question her by all means. She says she felt faint and must have been half-drowned before she recovered.’
The two police officials followed him to Eleanor’s room. Eleanor, slightly pale but obviously in full possession of her faculties, was reclining against pillows. She was attired in a dressing-jacket of pale blue and white, which did little towards improving her extraordinarily plain appearance. Her summer nightdress appeared to be cut fairly low in the neck, and she had huddled the jacket about her as though for warmth. The day, however, was unusually fine and hot, so that this proceeding appeared particularly unnecessary.
The inspector coughed apologetically and advanced to the bedside.
‘I hope you feel better, Miss Bing,’ he began.
‘Quite, I thank you,’ replied Eleanor, with her most prim expression.
‘Glad to hear it. Well, if you feel equal to doing so, we should like you to answer a few questions. That is, if you’ve no particular objection.’
This feeble attempt at jocularity died a sudden death before Eleanor’s contemptuous gaze.
‘First——’ said the inspector, in desperation.
‘First,’ interrupted Eleanor dispassionately, ‘I should like to request my father to descend to the study for a copy of one of the Latin authors.’
‘Which Latin author, my dear Eleanor?’ enquired Alastair in a solicitous tone, which drew a slight but ironical smile from his daughter, so unlike was it to his usual snarling utterance.
‘Any one you like,’ replied Eleanor, with affected weariness, ‘but don’t return with it in less than a quarter of an hour. I imagine these gentlemen will have concluded their inquisition by that time.’
Alastair, gasping like a landed fish, and, for once in his life, utterly bereft of speech, walked out of the room.
The Chief Constable tiptoed to the door and closed it.
‘Now, Miss Bing,’ the inspector resumed, seating himself, producing his note-book, and licking an anticipatory pencil, ‘we want you to tell us what caused you to fall head-first into the bath this morning.’
‘I was overcome by a feeling of extreme faintness,’ replied Eleanor coldly, ‘and was unable to call for assistance before I was wrapped in complete oblivion. The only wonder is that I am alive to tell the tale, or so I am informed by those who rescued me.’
‘Yes. Yours is a devoted family circle, Miss Bing,’ said the Chief Constable casually. He had strolled over to the window and was looking out.
Eleanor swung round at the sound of his voice, and, in so doing, loosed the folds of the dressing-jacket from about her neck for a full second. The angry reply she seemed about to make died on her lips, however, for the inspector suddenly cried:
‘Come now, Miss Bing! There’s no need for us to fence! Who are you shielding? Who attempted your life this morning in the bathroom?’
Clutching the dressing-jacket about her once more, Eleanor turned back on to her right side, and exclaimed:
‘Fence! Shielding! Pray explain yourself.’
‘Who attempted to murder you in the bathroom this morning?’ repeated the inspector, with brutal directness. ‘Come, now!’
Eleanor regarded him with lofty contempt.
‘My dear inspector,’ she said, with ineffable scorn, ‘you are talking the most utter nonsense! Nobody attempted any such thing. I fainted, as I have told you, and was lucky enough to be rescued in time. That is all I can say. And, as I am still weak, and feel somewhat fatigued, I feel sure that you will relieve me of your presence as soon as possible.’
The inspector opened the door for the Chief Constable. Eleanor ironically smiled them out.
‘Well!’ gasped the inspector. His chief chuckled.
‘Of course, she’s lying,’ Boring went on.
‘You mean?’ The Chief Constable raised his eyebrows interrogatively.
‘Sir, somebody half throttled that young woman, and then pushed her into the bath and left her for dead. I spotted the bruises on her neck.’
‘You sound sympathetic,’ said the Chief Constable, smiling slyly.
‘Well, I can understand his feelings, whoever he was,’ said the inspector gloomily. ‘Not,’ he hastened to add, ‘that I’m likely to commit a crime, I admit. But there’s some young women that are past all bearing, and, if you’ll excuse an entirely unofficial opinion, sir, would be better out of the way; and Miss Eleanor Bing is one of them. Now I wonder who the man is that she’s shielding. If we could find him we might be laying our hands on the Mountjoy murderer, sir.’
‘I rather doubt that, you know,’ said Sir Joseph quietly. ‘But we shall see. Yes, we shall see. What do you propose to do next?’
‘Just what I was going to ask you, sir.’
‘Oh, you’re in charge of the case now. It is for you to decide. I’m only an onlooker at present. Besides, being an acquaintance of the family, I inspire a certain amount of—what shall I say—well, I help to allay those feelings of apprehension which your purely official presence would be certain to cause.’
‘Make them less guarded, like,’ said the inspector hopefully. ‘Yes, there is that. Well, what do you say to a little general interrogation, sir? We could commence with the attempt on Miss Bing and work back to the Mountjoy business.’
‘Carry on,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘Although, as I said, I don’t think the two hang together.’
‘Both in the same bathroom. Rather suggestive, sir, don’t you think?’
‘Far too suggestive,’ said the Chief Constable thoughtfully. ‘If you really want my considered opinion, I say far too suggestive altogether. Calculated to mislead, in fact, Boring. Do you think people learn nothing from criminals like the great George Smith?’
‘I don’t follow, sir,’ said the inspector apologetically. ‘The man who drowned his wives and collected the insurance, wasn’t he?’
‘Something of the sort,’ the Chief Constable answered, with a reminiscent chuckle. ‘Yes, well, Smith made the great mistake which clever criminals so often do make. He believed that there is no sense in improving on a good thing. Five times be got away with it, but the sixth repetition laid him low.’
‘Yes, I get that all right, sir,’ said the inspector lugubriously, ‘but exactly what bearing——’
‘Well, suppose I am a criminal. I commit a murder by drowning a woman in the bath. I am not found out. In fact, nobody appears to suspect me. If I want to commit another murder, what do I do?’
‘Anything except drown the second one in the
bath, if you’ve any sense at all,’ said the inspector, almost animatedly.
‘Quite. Profiting, as I say, by the sad example of the late George Smith, I don’t repeat myself. The second time I may make the one mistake which they say all criminals do make at some time or another, and so both murders may be brought home to me. But now, supposing a successful murder has been committed in a certain bathroom in a certain house, and somebody else wants to commit a murder also.’
‘He’d imitate the first one as near as he could in the hopes that anything which did go wrong would recoil on to the first murderer instead of on to himself,’ said the inspector, slowly working it out. ‘Yes, I see your point, sir.’
‘That’s what I think may have happened in this house,’ concluded the Chief Constable, ‘but, of course, we cannot lose sight of the theory that this murderer may be another George Smith, who can’t leave a good thing alone, but must duplicate it. The craftsman, in fact, instead of the artist.’
They had descended to the foot of the stairs, and were there carrying on their low-toned conversation, when Garde Bing came by.
‘Oh, Mr Bing, we want to put a few questions to the family and so on,’ the inspector began.
‘I’ll put the library at your disposal,’ said Garde promptly. ‘Oh, Mander,’ as the impeccable servant appeared in response to his ring, ‘I want you to be on duty here for a time. These gentlemen require
your services. You had better place yourself entirely at their disposal for the time being. Find the people they require, keep the door shut, and pay particular attention to their instructions.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I shall be in the morning-room if I am wanted. Do you know where to find everybody?’
‘I think so, sir.’
The butler followed his young master’s retreating form with an eye of sympathy.
‘Not much love lorst between ’im and Miss Eleanor,’ he thought to himself, ‘but, still—it’s been a nasty shock to ’im.’
‘Ask Miss Clark to be good enough to come to the library.’ The inspector’s voice broke in upon his musings, as the two men followed Garde into the library, from which the young man immediately emerged and retired to the morning-room.
‘Very good, sir.’
Dorothy, white and more nervous than ever, presently appeared, and was asked to sit down.
‘Miss Clark?’
She nodded. The official pencil wrote.
‘A sad business this, Miss Clark.’
Dorothy found her voice, after a tremendous effort.
‘It is awful,’ she said, in little more than a whisper.
‘What do you mean? I want you to be very frank with us, Miss Clark. What is awful?’
‘Well’—the girl made a plucky effort to collect her thoughts —‘first there was poor Miss Mountjoy—but you know all about that?’
Her grey eyes sought those of the Chief Constable, and he nodded.
‘Then it seems as though somebody tried to—tried to——’
‘Tried to?’ The official voice was keen but kindly.
‘Tried to kill me!’ said Dorothy, with a gulp and a shudder.
‘Really? And what then?’
‘Why, and then poor—poor—poor Eleanor! She was all but drowned!’
At this recollection, Dorothy broke down utterly.
‘She might have died! We all thought she was—she was——’
‘Poor child,’ said the Chief Constable, patting her shoulder in a fatherly manner. ‘There, now. Don’t cry! Just try to tell us all that you know about last night. Will you? Come, be a brave girl, now!’
Dorothy lifted her head from the table, dabbed at her eyes, and smiled apologetically.
‘I had a motor accident,’ she explained, ‘and it left my nerves in an awfully stupid state. What do you want to know?’
‘Chiefly,’ said the inspector, ‘the story of what happened in this house last night. Tell us in your own words all that you can remember, and we will ask you any questions that we want answered. Now, then! Fire away!’
Dorothy rested a bare arm on the table, stared at a space between the two officers’ heads, and began:
‘Well, Mrs Bradley knew I was feeling nervous about poor Miss Mountjoy’s death, and so she invited me to sleep in her room. But before I went I had to do what seemed to me an awfully queer thing.’
‘Oh? What was that?’ It was the Chief Constable who asked the question. The inspector was busily taking notes.
‘I had to make up a dummy figure—the one you saw in the bedroom, in fact—and lay it in my bed, and place it, as far as possible, in the position in which I usually sleep. And, to make it as much like a human being as possible, we even put a mask on its head to look like a—a face, you know.’
The Chief Constable nodded, glanced at the inspector, and with his lips formed the words: ‘Not the young men after all!’
‘And I—I even put a shingle-cap on its head to make it as much like me as I possibly could. It was a horrid experience,’ concluded Dorothy, shuddering involuntarily at the recollection.
‘What is a shingle-cap?’ inquired the Chief Constable gravely, for the inspector was writing in his note-book as though for a wager.
‘Oh, it is a kind of silk net which we wear on our heads at night. It keeps your wave the right shape, and keeps your hair lying flat instead of its getting sort of bent up and funny, and looking peculiar in the morning,’ Dorothy explained. ‘They drive you mad the first night or two, but you get used to them,’ she added naïvely.
‘Thank you. Your exposition is most clear,’ said
the Chief Constable gravely, while the inspector, who had finished writing for the moment, openly grinned.
‘Yes, you placed the—er—the hair-net upon the model. And then?’
‘And then I put my dressing-gown where I always put it, and my bedroom slippers in position—to carry out the idea that it was really myself in the bed, you know—and then I walked along to Mrs Bradley’s room and slept in one of the twin beds there.’
‘I see. Was Mrs Bradley in bed then?’
‘Yes, she was sitting up in bed, reading. But when she had spoken to me—just a casual word or two—she lay down, and, I suppose, went to sleep. It was the horrible scream that woke us both.’
‘I see. Now, Miss Clark, I want you to think very carefully before answering my next question.’
Dorothy steeled her nerves, for, although the tone was quiet and urbane, the remark had a sinister ring. She recollected, with a chilly feeling about her shoulder-blades, that this kindly grey-haired man who sat opposite was the representative of the law. She drew a deep breath.