The Silk Stocking Murders (13 page)

The constable who was the first on the scene had lifted the body down from the door on which it was hanging, having first been careful to form a mental picture of its exact position and appearance, and had laid it on a divan which filled one corner of the small room; otherwise nothing else had been touched. Everybody was anxiously excited. All stations had already been acquainted with the tentative conclusions reached by Headquarters in the other cases of this nature, and a warning had been issued that any further deaths in the same category were to be regarded
prima facie
as murder, evidence in the form of farewell letters to the contrary notwithstanding. Considerable anxiety therefore existed as to whether this case might provide a definite clue at last.

It seemed to Roger, as he entered the little sitting-room in Moresby’s wake, that the confusion prevailing was such that any possible clues must be obliterated. It took him exactly thirty seconds to realise that exactly the opposite was the case; the small room was full of men, it was true, but there was no confusion; each had his own job and he was doing it quietly and methodically, and without getting in the way of anybody else. Roger, feeling exceedingly unimportant in the middle of all this scientific bustle, stepped unobtrusively into the nearest corner, where he might be more or less out of the way, and watched what was happening.

Moresby had joined the Divisional Inspector by the divan, and they were bending over the body; a photographer was setting up his camera near them; a finger-print expert was closely examining all the shining or polished surfaces in the room; a constable, evidently used to the job, was making notes for the plan he was going to draw; in the bedroom adjoining another constable had even been told to look after the dead girl’s friend, and was there administering what consolation he could.

The more Roger looked, the smaller he felt. It was not difficult, in face of this sort of thing, to understand something of Scotland Yard’s good-humoured scorn for the amateur detective.

From the conversation about him Roger gathered the main facts. The circumstances of the death
were almost exactly the same as those of the others, Lady Ursula’s excepted. The hook screwed into the further side of the door, the overturned chair, the silk stocking and bare leg, the way in which it had been arranged round the victim’s neck, all were precisely the same. The only minute points of difference, so far as he could hear, were that the girl was dressed only in her underclothes and that the usual farewell notice instead of being written consisted of a printed line or two of poetry, apparently cut from a book, and was pinned on to her clothes at the breast with a brooch. A mauve silk wrapper lay across the back of an armchair.

Roger’s lonely vigil did not last long. He had hardly had time to realise what was going on around him and take in these few facts before Moresby beckoned to him to join them by the divan, where he proceeded to introduce him to the Divisional Inspector, a soldierly-built figure with a carefully-waxed moustache.

“You take a look at her, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, “and see if you can make anything fresh of her, because I’m blessed if I can.”

Roger had seen plenty of violent death during his service in France during the War, but dead men are different from dead girls, and girls dead through slow strangulation are different from any others. He shuddered in spite of his efforts to control himself as his gaze rested on the distorted face. She may have been pretty in life, but she certainly was not pretty in death. By her sides lay her hands, tightly clenched.

She was a small girl, not much more than five feet in height and slightly built, and she was dressed in her underclothes only, with a lightcoloured silk stocking on one leg; the other stocking still lay, though now loosely, round her neck.

“Who was she?” Roger asked, in a low voice.

The Divisional Inspector answered him. “Name of Dorothy Fielder, sir,” he said briskly. “An actress, she was. Had one of the small parts in that play at The Princess’s,
Her Husband’s Wife.
The other girl, Zelma Deeping, she’s in it too; understudying, I believe.”

“I see,” said Roger. He bent over the body and read the wording on the little piece of paper pinned to her breast:

One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.

“Hood.” he said.
“The Bridge of Sighs.
Well, that’s certainly a little more usual than
Queen Mab,
but I don’t see how it’s going to help.”

“Now you see the advantage of having a literary gentleman to help us, Tucker,” said Moresby jovially to the Divisional Inspector, who smiled politely. “By a poet called Hood, is it, Mr. Sheringham? Now, I wonder whether they’d be likely to have a volume of his works here. You might look in that bookcase, Tucker. And be careful, of course, if there is one.”

Tucker nodded, and crossed the room.

The photographer came forward. “The doctor’ll be here any minute, Chief Inspector. Shall I take my photographs now?”

“Yes, Bland, you may as well. I shall want the usual, and you’d better take one or two close-ups of the face and neck. Don’t touch her till the doctor’s finished, of course. And stand by when you’re through; we may want some more later, if there’s any bruises on the body.” Roger had already noticed that, though the two Inspectors had bent over the body and examined it as closely as possible, they had been careful not to touch it.

“This is pretty damnable, isn’t it?” Roger muttered, as the photographer, who had focused his camera in advance, now proceeded to expose his plates.

“It is that, Mr. Sheringham. But even now there doesn’t seem any way of proving murder. It still
might
be suicide, you know.”

“It might, but it isn’t,” snapped Roger, whose nerves were beginning to feel the strain.

“Well, Tucker tells me Superintendent Green (he’s the Superintendent of this district; one of the Big Four you newspaper men are always talking about)—he may be coming. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the Assistant Commissioner (it was him who spoke to me on the telephone) didn’t turn up too. If these are murders, and I’m not saying you’re not right about ’em, then we’ve got to get busy at the Yard. You don’t know Sir Paul Graham, do you?”

“The Assistant Commissioner? No. He’s new, isn’t he? It was Sir Charles Merriman I came up against, over that Wychford business eighteen months ago. What’s he like?”

“You’ll like him, Mr. Sheringham. A very nice gentleman. But of course he hasn’t hardly shaken down yet. Hullo, here’s the doctor. Afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Sheringham. Good afternoon, Dr. Pilkington. Nasty business this, by the look of it.”

Roger turned away and saw Inspector Tucker approaching with a book held gingerly in one hand. “Would this be the one, sir?” he asked.

Roger glanced at the title and nodded. “Yes, that’s the man. Let’s see if that passage has been cut out of this copy.”

“One minute, sir, first, please.” Tucker beckoned to the finger-print expert and held out the volume. “Just take a look at this, Andrews, will you?”

Andrews took the book in a cautious grasp and examined it minutely. Sprinkling over one corner a little light-grey dust out of a receptable like a pepper-box, he scrutinised the result, then shook his head regretfully and gave the book back. “Nothing, I’m afraid. Or anywhere else either, except the two girls’. Why, did he handle this?”

“Half a minute, and I’ll tell you. Could you find the place, Mr. Sheringham, sir?”

Roger glanced at the index and turned to a page. Neatly cut out of it were the lines in question. He pointed to the blank space in silence.

Andrews nodded and made a rueful grimace. “That establishes that he worked in gloves, then, at any rate. And those’ll be the scissors he cut it out with.” He gestured towards a small pair of nail-scissors lying on a side-table. “I’ve examined them already and there’s not a mark. No, I’m afraid there’s nothing for me here.”

“You seem to be taking it for granted that there is a ‘he,’” Roger remarked mildly. “I thought Scotland Yard hadn’t made up their minds on that point yet?”

Andrews regarded him with a smile of amusement, in which Tucker joined. Roger had an uncomfortable feeling that he must have made a fool of himself somehow, but could hardly see how. Andrews proceeded to enlighten him.

“There’s no prints
at all
on that book, sir,” he pointed out gently. “If the girl had cut it out herself she’d have been bound to leave her own prints. And so would anyone else. But somebody cut it out, didn’t they? Therefore that somebody must have been wearing gloves.” He spoke as to a very small child, grappling with its ABC.

“Oh—um—yes,” Roger agreed. “Well, anyhow, that certainly does clinch the fact of the extra ‘he,’ doesn’t it?”

“It does that, sir,” said the Divisional Inspector grimly, and went over to report to Moresby, who was talking to the doctor as the latter bent over the body.

A minute later the door opened and three further men came in. Two of these Roger was able to identify as Detective Superintendent Green, whom he had met for a few minutes once before, and Sir Paul Graham; the other, he learned on enquiry of Andrews, was an Inspector who was an expert in strangulation cases. Roger gathered that Scotland Yard was now seriously perturbed about this unknown maniac and his gruesome work, whatever its representatives might pretend to himself.

He listened to the conversation which followed.

“Found anything, Moresby?” the Superintendent asked laconically, after a cursory glance at the body.

Moresby shook his head. “I haven’t been here long. Tucker tells me he had a look round before I came, but couldn’t get hold of anything.”

“I’ll look round myself,” remarked the Superintendent, who was a large man beginning to show signs of corpulence. Without more ado he dropped on his hands and knees. “Haven’t opened the hands yet, I see,” he grunted as he did so.

“Been waiting for the doctor,” Moresby replied. “He’s only just got here.”

Roger watched the large form of the Superintendent with interest. While Sir Paul joined the doctor and Moresby by the divan, he began to crawl with lumbering agility up and down the carpet, subjecting every square inch of it to a minute examination; and when the carpet was exhausted, he examined the boards round it with equal care, poking his head under tables and chairs, but never shifting any piece of furniture from its position. At the end of seven or eight minutes he arose and shook his head at Moresby. “Not a sign,” he wheezed.

In the meantime the doctor had completed his first examination, flexing the limbs, moving the head between his hands, taking careful note of the skin round the neck and the condition of the features. He now proceeded to open the clenched fingers. Moresby and the Assistant Commissioner bent forward eagerly as he did so, only to draw back again the next moment with expressions of acute disappointment. The small hands were empty.

“There’s not the least sign of a struggle even, that I can see,” muttered the doctor, examining the dead girl’s nails. “Look—nothing here at all.”

“Hell!” muttered Moresby under his breath. It is in the hands, as Roger knew, that the most valuable clue is usually to be discovered if any sort of a struggle has taken place.

“Well,” Moresby added, “I’d like to know if there are any bruises on the body.”

“At once?” asked the doctor. “I shall be examining her later on in any case, of course.”

“I’d like to know at once, I think, doctor. It’s most important to find out if there are any signs of a struggle on the body.”

“All right,” said the doctor. “I’ll get her undressed. But I don’t think there will be any such signs, judging by the hands.”

Superintendent Green, who, his crawlings over, had joined the other three at the divan (Roger was holding himself a little uneasily aloof, not knowing quite what to do), turned round. “All right, Bland,” he said to the photographer, “you can wait in the hall; and you, too, Andrews.” He gave similar directions to the plan-drawing constable and the other subordinates, who filed out. “No need for a whole Sunday-school treat in here while the doctor’s examining her, sir,” he grunted to the Assistant Commissioner, “is there?” It was the first sign of feeling he had yet shown.

With practised hands the doctor proceeded to examine the body. “I’ll take the temperature first,” he said.

There was a dead silence for half a minute.

“No sign of any bruising on the front, was there, doctor?” said Moresby.

The doctor, who had been bending over the body, looked up. “None that I saw, but I’ll examine it more closely in a moment. Don’t seem to be any here either. There was no struggle. Hullo, what’s this, though?”

Conquering his reluctance, Roger drew nearer. The four were looking at two indistinct marks that lay transversally across the backs of the girl’s thighs, about a third of the way down. They were very faint indentations, not discoloured, and each was about four to five inches long.

“Funny,” observed the doctor. “What do you make of them, Superintendent? They must be recent. Made shortly before death, I should imagine, or they’d be discoloured. Too late for bruises, and too early for post-mortem staining.”

Superintendent Green looked puzzled. “Looks as if she’d been hit smartly across the legs, almost, doesn’t it? With a thin bit of cane, or something like that.”

The doctor frowned. “Oh, no. That couldn’t possibly have produced them. It must have been a steady pressure, and applied for some considerable time; otherwise they’d have flattened out by now. They’re not much more than half an inch broad, you see. I should say she’s been sitting for at least half an hour well forward on a chair that had a sharp metal edge raised an inch or so in the front.”

“What on earth would she want to do that for?” asked Moresby in perplexity.

“Don’t ask me,” retorted the doctor. “And I don’t suppose for a moment she did. I’m only suggesting the kind of thing that could have made those marks.”

“Do you attach any importance to them, doctor?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.

“Not the least,” replied the doctor briskly. “The cause of death is perfectly obvious, strangulation by hanging. Well, let’s have a look at this thermometer.” He plucked it out and examined it. “Humph!” was all he said.