The Silk Stocking Murders (12 page)

“Oh!” said Roger, somewhat dashed.

C
IRCUMSTANCES
which, applied to ourselves, can only bear one interpretation find themselves carrying quite different ones when applied to other people. On finding Gerald Newsome’s name on the list of suspects Roger had no hesitation in affirming, and thoroughly believing his affirmation, that he could not possibly be guilty because Roger knew he could not be; and he expected this statement to be accepted as authoritative. But when Pleydell, with equal certainty, pronounced that George Dunning could not possibly be guilty because he could not possibly be, Roger was able to set this down at once as mere personal prejudice.

Yet it must be admitted that, when confronted an hour later with the gentleman in question, Roger’s heart did sink. Instead of the potentially sinister, secretly vicious creature whom his imagination had tricked him into anticipating, he found himself face to face with a large mountain of transparent guilelessness and innocent benevolence. If appearances counted for anything at all in this world, George Dunning could no more be a potential murderer in cold blood than could Roger himself. Less so, if anything, for whereas Roger was at least able to put himself in that murderer’s place and obtain some faint understanding of the horrible enjoyment experienced by that warped brain, George Dunning was obviously incapable of putting himself in any other place but his own, and possibly not always even there.

Only one thing did strike Roger as mildly curious, and that was the evident lack of ease which Dunning seemed to experience in Pleydell’s presence. Even that, however, was explained when Pleydell, having settled the excuse which had brought him, a matter of a mooted bachelor dinner-party which would now have to be cancelled owing to his mourning, somewhat abruptly took his departure without offering to take Roger as well.

Dunning turned to his unsought guest with something of the aspect of a bewildered but well-meaning ram faced with a new shepherd. It was obvious that though perfectly ready to be hospitable, he had not the least idea what to do with this Pleydell-imposed encumbrance.

His countenance cleared. “Have a drink, eh?” he said, with relief.

“Well, thank you,” Roger agreed. A drink would at least serve him with an excuse for a twenty-minutes’ stop.

“Great fellow, old Pleydell,” observed George Dunning, mixing the drinks with skill. “You know him well?”

“Oh, fairly well, yes,” said Roger, his back to the fire. He looked round the very comfortable room, in which fishing-rods, an oar and other sporting trophies figured prominently. Like most bachelor rooms, it seemed typical of its owner. Women’s rooms, like their figures, are rarely individual.

“Rotten, that business about poor old Ursula, eh?” pronounced Dunning, squirting soda. “Say when. Makes one feel all thumbs with Pleydell, doesn’t it? Don’t know what the deuce to say to a feller whose fiancée’s just hanged herself. Devilish awkward.”

“Devilish,” Roger agreed. “When.”

Dunning approached him with a half-filled tumbler. “Well, chin-chin,” said the suspect.

“Good luck,” said the man from Scotland Yard.

They settled themselves in chairs before the fire.

“You were at Rugby, weren’t you?” said Roger conversationally. “I wonder if you knew J. B. Fotherington?”

“The games-bird?” rejoined Dunning, with some approach to enthusiasm. “Rather. I should jolly well say so. Why, he taught me to play rugger.”

“Did he really? I knew him very well at Oxford. We had rooms on the same staircase.”

Confidence being thus established, Roger allowed it to be increased by a judicious conversation upon sporting topics, in the course of which he allowed Mr. Dunning to elicit the fact that he had once upon a time been awarded a half-blue for playing golf against Cambridge.

“And now you write books, eh?” pursued Mr. Dunning, in the course of his artless questionnaire. “Pleydell said you were the Sheringham who wrote novels, didn’t he?”

Roger admitted modestly that he wrote novels.

“Dashed good too,” said Mr. Dunning politely. “I’ve read one or two. Jolly interesting. Look here, finish that up and have another.” Roger suspected that it was the half-blue rather than his art that had prompted the offer, but he accepted readily enough.

“Yes,” he said in a meditative voice when Dunning returned from the sideboard, “I’ve been lunching with Pleydell. He seems very cut up.”

“Well, naturally,” pointed out Dunning, with reason.

“You knew Lady Ursula pretty well, didn’t you?” Roger asked innocently.

“Oh, so-so, you know. Not so frightfully. Not my type, exactly.”

“No,” said Roger. Dunning’s type, he knew without being told, would be small, fluffy, blue-eyed and extremely clinging; he shuddered slightly; it was not his own type. “She was a very modern sort of person, wasn’t she?”

“Oh, yes, fairly hectic. Awfully good sort and all that, of course, but a bit—well, hectic, you know. Not exactly loud, but—well, hectic.”

“I know,” said Roger gravely. “Hectic. The kind that calls every man ‘my dear,’ whether she’s known him ten minutes or ten years.”

“That’s it, exactly.”

“One gathered that,” observed Roger to his glass, “from that note she left.”

“Oh, yes; rather. Exactly like her, that note. Just the sort of thing she would leave.‘Mother have a fit,’ eh? Jolly good.”

“But it was the sort of thing she would do?”

“What, hang herself? No, that I’m dashed if it was; I could hardly believe it at first. Last thing in the whole world Ursula would go and do, if you’d asked me.”

“So I’d gathered,” said Roger.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

Suddenly Roger started. “Oh, good Lord, I’ve just remembered a note I’ve got to get written in a frightful hurry. I must run round to my club and get it done at once.”

“Oh, rot,” said the hospitable Mr. Dunning. “No need to do that. Why not write it here?”

“That’s very good of you,” Roger murmured. “Thanks. I’d like to.”

A moment later he was seated at his host’s writing table, a sheet of thick creamy notepaper before him as unlike the bluish-grey paper of Lady Ursula’s note as he had feared. Neatly printed at the top was Mr. Dunning’s address. There was no possibility even that this was a new lot, hastily ordered.

Roger scribbled something on the sheet, put it into an envelope and thrust it into his pocket.

“My man can run out to the post with it for you,” Dunning suggested as Roger rose.

“Oh, no, thanks,” Roger replied carelessly. “It’s only a memorandum about some work, and I shall be passing the place. I can drop it in now as I go by.” He resumed his seat. To himself he was thinking: “Well, there’s not the slightest hope, but I’ll try the last card. Though how on earth does one steer the conversation on to such matters with this simple creature?”

“I’ve just been reading Freud, Dunning,” he remarked, a little abruptly.

“Most interesting. Have you ever read him?”

“Good Lord, no,” replied that gentleman, shying violently.

Shortly afterwards Roger took his leave, with the full knowledge that whenever his name should be mentioned hereafter in Mr. Dunning’s presence, the formula would greet it: “That Chap? Oh, yes, not a bad fellow, really. Got a half-blue for golf, you know. But a bit of a bore in these days. Will talk a hell of a lot of rot about sex and all that sort of thing. Get a bit fed up with that sort of thing nowadays, don’t you?”

But one thing was as certain as anything in this world not based upon evidence can be: Mr. George Dunning could be wiped forthwith off the list of suspects.

So that left the Hon. Arnold Beverley and Gerald Newsome. And neither of them could possibly have done the thing.

Roger took a taxi and drove back to Scotland Yard to report lack of progress. Moresby was out, and, somewhat disconsolately, Roger returned to his rooms, leaving a message that he should be rung up when the Chief Inspector returned, there to ruminate alone on the other possibilities presented by this annoying case.

An hour later he was still in the same quandary. George Dunning could not be the man, and Jerry Newsome could not be the man; therefore, if one of those three it was, it must be Arnold Beverley. And Arnold Beverley could not be the man. The only conclusion seemed to be that it was none of them, and the whole case must be begun afresh. Chief Inspector Moresby, looking in on chance before returning to Scotland Yard, found his distracted colleague on the verge of pressing for the preventive detention of every person on either list.

“Or would it be a woman, Moresby?” he asked despairingly, having given his account of the day’s results. “We’ve never considered that, have we?”

“Now, Mr. Sheringham,” soothed the Chief Inspector, “you mustn’t get upset because results don’t fall into your hands right away. I shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get hold of anything really definite for another month. These things have to be done gradually, Mr. Sheringham.”

“Blast gradually!” returned his collaborator rudely.

With imperturbability Moresby retailed his own activities since they parted. He had put men on to inquiring into the movements of the three suspects on and around the dates in question, and he had himself taken a hand in the investigation into the notepaper. The makers had been identified, and Moresby had been to see them and asked for a list of stationers, wholesale and retail, to whom it had been supplied. He remained confident of important results from this line of inquiry.

“It’s our only clue, Mr. Sheringham, to say
clue,”
he pointed out. “We’re bound to follow it up as hard as we can.”

“Of course,” said Roger thoughtfully, “it’s the Monte Carlo list that’s the really important one. The fellow must have been in Monte Carlo then, and assuming that he knew Lady Ursula (of which the probabilities are in favour, to put it at its lowest), he ought to figure on that list. But he needn’t be on the other one at all. There’s no reason why Miss Manners should know the names of
all
her sister’s male friends, however intimate the two were.”

“Yes, and as to that, even if he isn’t on Mr. Pleydell’s list he’ll be on the one the French are getting out for us, of all English residents in and around Monte Carlo on February the ninth. That ought to be quite enough to check by, when we get our results from that notepaper.”

“I suppose he
is
an Englishman?” queried Roger.

The Chief Inspector laughed. “Oh, don’t go suggesting things like that, Mr. Sheringham. We’ve got all England to consider as it is before we lay our hands on him; don’t go making it the whole world.”

“It is the whole world,” replied Mr. Sheringham, with gloom. “But at any rate don’t forget that the Germans go in for this kind of murder more than any other nation. Except perhaps America.”

The Chief Inspector promised, not to lose sight of that point.

They continued to debate, but nothing fresh seemed to emerge from the talk.

“Well,” said Moresby, rising, “I must be getting back to the Yard. There may be a report or two in by now, though it’s a bit early. Care to come round on the off-chance, Mr. Sheringham?”

Roger glanced at his watch. “Ten to four. Yes, I’ll come round with you; and the British nation can stand me a cup of tea in your office. There’s nothing like—— Excuse me a minute, there’s the telephone.” He crossed to the instrument. “For you, Moresby,” he said, laying down the receiver. “Scotland Yard. Well, let’s hope something’s turned up.”

Moresby spoke into the telephone. “Hullo? Yes, Chief Inspector Moresby speaking. Oh, yes, sir.—Good gracious, sir, is that so?” He pulled out a notebook and pencil and began to jot down notes. “Yes. Yes. Six Pelham Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road? Yes. Inspector Tucker, yes. Very good, sir. And we’d better have Dr. Pilkington, hadn’t we? Superintendent Green will see to the rest. Very well, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes. Oh, and you don’t mind if I bring Mr. Sheringham along, do you? Seeing that he’s been working with me on the other cases, I mean. Yes, exactly. Very well, sir. In twenty minutes.” He hung up the receiver.

Roger, who had hardly been able to contain himself in the background, gushed forth into a stream of questions.

The Chief Inspector nodded with a grave air. “Yes, this is a nasty business, Mr. Sheringham. There’s been another girl murdered in just the same way, in one of those blocks of flats in the Gray’s Inn Road. We’re going round at once.”

Roger opened the door into the passage feeling, in spite of all sense, as if he were personally to blame for the death of this further victim.

The Chief Inspector, however, retained his professional outlook. “It’s only once in a lifetime that one meets with these mass murderers, you know, Mr. Sheringham,” he said conversationally, as they put on their coats. “It’s a real experience. I’m glad they put me in charge of the other investigations.”

T
O
one who, like Roger, has never seen his country’s criminal-hunting machine in action, the spectacle of Scotland Yard’s first concentration upon the scene of a murder is extraordinarily impressive. It is often said that the detection of crime has been reduced to a science, but it would perhaps give a clearer impression to say that it has been expanded into a business, with its card-indexes, its heads of departments, its experts in various branches, and its smooth-running efficiency; the way in which it is organised is, in fact, far more closely related to that of a commercial enterprise than to the more rigid and less imaginative efficiency of the Army or the other administrative governmental departments. If the murderer himself could catch a glimpse of the activity which prevails upon the spot he has recently left, all hopes he had fondly entertained of escaping arrest must abruptly disappear; he would watch the skilled and methodical pains that are taken to ensure his capture with a feeling of helpless despair.

When Roger and Moresby arrived the business was just getting into its stride. From the moment that an agitated girl had run out into Gray’s Inn Road, clutched the arm of the first constable she could find, and gasped out that the friend who shared a flat with her had hanged herself on the sitting-room door while she herself was out at lunch—from that moment the machinery had been set in motion. The constable had hurriedly reported the news to a policeman on point duty within a few yards before accompanying the girl back to the flat, and he had got in touch with his station; the sergeant there had telephoned through to the Divisional Inspector, who had immediately communicated with Scotland Yard before jumping into a car and going round to the block in person. Scotland Yard had notified the Chief Inspector who had the other investigations in hand, luckily finding him at the first number they called, and had already rushed round the necessary experts; a superior officer or two, including perhaps the Assistant Commissioner himself, were following in a few minutes. The Divisional Surgeon was summoned, and constables told off to guard the entrance to the flat and stand by for any further orders.