The Studio Crime (26 page)

“I'm awfully sorry,” repeated Laurence humbly. “I wish I could have made the sitting to-morrow. But they want the finished drawing to-night.”

“Who does?” asked John, looking at the large sheet of paper on which Laurence had endeavoured to reproduce Serafine's vigorous and incisive personality while suppressing his own lively instinct for caricature.

“Some bally women's paper or other—
Fireside Notes
, or something.”

“Didn't know you went in for contributing to the domestic press, Laurence.”

Laurence looked rather uncomfortable and cleared his throat.

“I don't as a rule. But—h'm! I rather wanted to do some studies of Miss Wimpole. And so... so when Ferguson tackled me about a portrait for his rag, I—I thought it'd be rather an opportunity of getting a sitting.”

“I feel honoured, Mr. Newtree,” said Serafine, strolling over to inspect the drawings. “But I wish you hadn't made me so pretty.”

This being the kind of remark to which Mr. Newtree was quite incapable of finding a reply, he flushed slightly, began to say something incoherent, and subsided, looking at John for help. John laughed.

“She only says it to annoy because she knows it teases,” he said. “I expect
Fireside Bits
won't think they're pretty enough.”

Hastily changing a subject he felt incapable of treating with the grace it demanded, Laurence asked:

“Have you found the murderer yet?”

“No. But I'm on a trail.”

“The right one?”

“I hope so.”

At his confident tone Serafine glanced quickly at him and away again. John, noticing that glance and her sombre look, said rallyingly:

“You don't look as if you shared my hope, Serafine. Have you lost confidence in your sleuth?”

With an averted face, knocking the ash off her cigarette with great care, Serafine muttered:

“Of course not...”

“Who's the man?” asked Laurence, taking up a pencil and beginning to make a sketch of Serafine's averted head.

“The obvious one, of course,” replied John teasingly, and was amazed when Serafine turned on him a face gone suddenly white and hard.

“John!” she said in a strangled voice. “You wouldn't— But you'll let him go! Surely your friends are more to you than this—this detective game of yours!”

Her eyes were fierce, and two spots of carmine, appearing suddenly in her white cheeks, gave a sort of bizarre and hectic beauty to her worn face. Laurence, in the background, began another sketch. Completely taken aback, John stammered:

“My dear! What do you mean?”

Controlling herself with an effort, Serafine said in a strained, cold way:

“You said that you liked Dr. Merewether—that he was your friend.”

“I did, I do. But what— My dear girl, you don't imagine that I'd have anything to do with arresting Merewether, even if— But of course he didn't. The thing's absurd! When I said the obvious one, I meant our friend in the fez.”

The sudden fire and colour died out of Serafine's face. She looked at her friend in silence for a moment, and then made an attempt to laugh.

“Of course. I'm sorry!” She drew a long, unsteady breath. “For a moment I thought... As I say, my constitution won't stand murders at close range. Sorry to be such an excitable idiot, John.”

She got up from her place on the model's throne and went over towards the great window, over which the leafless boughs of an ash tree made a black tracery in the white light of afternoon. John looked after her in silence, perturbed and puzzled. Laurence with a sigh abandoned his pencil and perched himself on the piano stool.

“Do you mean to say, Serafine,” said John slowly at last, “that to you Merewether is the—obvious one?”

There was a pause. Then without turning round, Serafine said in an unsteady, muffled voice:

“No—I... I don't. Why should I? I thought—thought you did, that was all.”

John stood looking thoughtfully at her inexpressive back. He knew that she had worried a good deal over Dr. Merewether's apparent connection with the mysterious crime. But her manner now seemed to point to something a good deal more serious than distress at the fact that Merewether should be suspected by the police. He walked over to her and linked his arm in hers.

“Serafine,” he said seriously, “I feel as if you knew or guessed something about Merewether which you haven't told me. Wouldn't it be better to tell me? Even if it's something which seems to go against him? The sooner I can find the real murderer, the better for Merewether, and the more I know the more likely I am to solve this puzzle. I am afraid that you have some special reason for thinking poor Merewether did it. But if you tell me, we may find that it is a special reason for thinking that he didn't do it. After all, he didn't do it. The thing's impossible. And so the more we know, the sooner we can clear him.”

Without returning the pressure of his hand on her arm, Serafine said sombrely:

“I think you're an optimist, John.”

“My dear, you can't believe—”

Serafine gave a high, discordant laugh which set John's teeth on edge.

“Oh, can't believe this and can't believe that,” she cried. “What's the use of can't believe, if you
have
to believe it?”

“What do you mean, Serafine?” asked John gravely. “Come! Hadn't you better tell me? It can do no harm, in any circumstances. I'm not a Yard officer. I can drop my footling investigations when and where I like.”

Serafine drew a long, unsteady breath.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I'd better tell you. It'll be a relief to tell somebody who feels the same way about it as myself. It—it only happened this morning. I suppose that's why I'm behaving like an hysterical idiot this afternoon.” She glanced uncertainly at Newtree.

“I'll sling my hook,” remarked Newtree, rising, “for a bit.”

“No, don't go, Mr. Newtree. Unless you'd rather. Why should you?”

“All right,” said Newtree, sitting down again. “I'll stay, then. But nothing'll make me believe Merewether had anything to do with this affair. I can't think why you're all getting so bothered about it. If he told me he'd done it, I shouldn't believe him.”

Serafine sighed.

“I wonder,” she said. “Sometimes one has to believe what one would give the world not to.”

She went over to the throne and sat down again, and began to tell John all that bad happened during the morning, from her encounter with the strange woman in Hampstead High Street to the passage-at-arms with Dr. Mordby in her own hall. John listened in silence, and Newtree, taking advantage of the animation on his sitter's face as she told her story, made drawings of her and listened at the same time.

“At any rate,” Serafine finished, “he's got away. Perhaps...”

John said nothing. In his opinion, the chances of Dr. Merewether getting farther than a railway station were extremely remote. He knew that for the last two days the doctor had never been out of sight of one of Hembrow's men.

Serafine, watching his grave face, asked pitifully:

“Do you think he has a chance?”

“Of getting out of the country? Frankly, my dear, not the slightest. A Yard man's been watching him ever since Hembrow first suspected him. Probably already...”

John left his sentence unfinished.

“Best thing that could happen,” observed Newtree tranquilly. “Now we'll have an explanation and the matter'll be cleared up. Idiotic to run away just because you're suspected of murder and haven't got a cast-iron alibi. Worst thing he could do, in my opinion.”

Oh, how can you be so ridiculous!” cried Serafine, jumping to her feet, and looking at her host as if he were beneath contempt and fit only for instant extermination. Her tortured nerves found a queer relief in this violent rudeness to an inoffensive person. “I never heard such obstinate tommy-rot! You say you're a friend of Dr. Merewether's. But to talk like that isn't friendship, it's just blind laziness!”

Newtree's glasses dropped and he blinked at the virago, flushing slightly and feeling extremely at a loss. Yet queerly not altogether displeased at being made the subject of a fierce attack; it was a new experience.

“Isn't it obvious, if Dr. Merewether's gone, that he has some reason for going?” went on Serafine. “And what can the reason be but” She stopped abruptly.

“Dunno,” said Laurence gruffly. “I'm not a detective. Ask Christmas.”

John, who had been thinking deeply and had hardly noticed this little passage, asked slowly:

“This woman, Serafine. You say she was mad?” Serafine hesitated.

“More or less. Mad sounds a little too strong. She wasn't raving, or anything like that. She seemed to have lost her memory and to be incapable of looking after herself.”

“She couldn't give an account of herself, at any rate?”

“No. She'd forgotten her own name. She was quite vague about everything.”

“And she said she was frightened?”

“Yes. She seemed to have had some dreadful shock. She talked about something that made her forget, something that made her frightened...”

“Laurence!” said John, turning abruptly to his friend. “Can you lend me Greenaway for the afternoon?”

“Certainly, as long as you return him intact.”

“Then I'll be off, and take him with me. The less time I lose the better. May I use your telephone?”

“Of course,” murmured Laurence, looking a little surprised at this sudden access of energy.

Serafine asked huskily:

“John, tell me first.... Can you help? Is there any chance—any hope?”

“Of Merewether's getting away? None. But I'm going to try and save him the trouble of proving himself innocent.”

Serafine looked at him helplessly and shrugged her shoulders as he took up the telephone receiver.

“Hullo. Is that Hampstead 9497? Is that Mr. Lascarides? Can you be at the corner of Circus Road, Wellington Road, at a quarter past three this afternoon? I've got the stuff. Yes. Yes. Don't come if you don't want it... What's that? No. I say, I've got the stuff. Isn't that enough for you? You won't? All right. Good-bye.”

As John took the receiver from his ear a faint spluttering noise, like the objurgations of an enraged elf, could be heard in the studio. John hung the receiver up and smiled, looking at his wrist-watch.

“Got nearly three-quarters of an hour,” he observed. “I'll go and tell Greenaway I want him as an assistant.”

“Why,” asked Newtree curiously, “did you talk in that extraordinary wooden voice to your blasphemous friend?”

“Didn't want him to recognize me. Wanted to remain incognito.”

“You don't think he's coming all the way from Hampstead to meet an incognito, do you?”

“Yes,” said John lightly. “I'm rather inclined to think he will. There's nothing like arousing people's curiosity to make them do what you want.”

“Are you an observant man, Greenaway?”

“I trust so, sir. Reasonably so, that is.”

“Do you remember,” asked John, as they strolled together out of Madox Court a few moments before three o'clock, “the foreigner in the fez who came to the studios the night Mr. Frew was killed?”

“I should say I do, sir,” responded Greenaway with emphasis. “He wasn't the sort of customer whose looks one is likely to forget. I remember every little thing that happened that dreadful night, sir, as plain as if it was happening now in front of my eyes. I can't hardly believe now that my boy is safe from being thought a murderer. It all seemed to go so terrible against him at first.”

“I don't think the police'll trouble your son further,” said John.

“I always thought the oriental gentleman had done it, sir. Polite and smiling as you please, but looked as if 'e'd stick at nothing.”

“Do you think you would know him again if you saw him?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the old man promptly. “I can see him plain in my mind's eye now, and if he was to come along this road now, I should know him at once.”

“Apart from his fez?”

“I could pick him out of a dozen gentlemen in fezes, sir. It wasn't the fez. It was the 'ole look of the man as he stood there in the doorway.”

“Well,” said John, smiling slightly at this dramatic declaration, “this is what I want you to do. I am going to meet somebody at the corner of Circus Road at a quarter past three. I want you to hang about not far away, without seeming to have any connection with me. When the man I'm waiting for turns up, we shall stand there and have a little conversation, he and I—rather an amusing one, I fancy. I want you then to stroll slowly past us, without giving any sign of recognition or seeming to look at us particularly, and then wait for me round the corner out of sight, or in the Wellington Arms, if you like. When I've finished my little talk with my friend, I shall come and meet you, and I shall expect you to be able to tell me whether the man you see me with is the same man who came to Madox Court three days ago or not. See? I want you to identify him for me, if possible.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Greenaway, looking rather pleased at being asked to take a hand in this drama. “I shall identify him fast enough, if it is the man.”

“Good,” said John. “Here we are at the corner of Circus Road, and it's nearly ten past three. I shall just wait here. You wander off by yourself and watch for a man to come and meet me, but remember you and I are strangers for the next half-hour or so.”

“Very good, sir,” said the old servant with deep satisfaction, and walked slowly off with the air of one who has nothing to do and all the afternoon to do it in.

John took up a position at the corner and waited. He determined to give Mr. Lascarides half an hour's grace, and then, if he had not turned up, go and beard him in his bijou lair at Golders Green. At ten minutes past three John felt fairly certain that he would come, whether his previous story had been true or not: for if the story were true, he was in the habit of making assignations with unknown people; and if it were not true, and he had something to conceal, he would come to see how the land lay.