The Threefold Cord

by Francis Vivian

  “Yes, I have noticed it,” Knollis understated.

  “When I went through to the Green Alley there was an axe leaning against the wall—one of those fireman’s things with an insulated handle. You know the type!”

  “Yes, I know the type,” Knollis replied. “And it was leaning against the wall? Interesting!”

  “Yes, beside the door. It occurred to me as I was climbing out of the bath that it would be a handy spot in which to leave the thing if you had intentions regarding Manchester’s life.”

  Knollis nodded. “It would indeed! But why do you tell me this?”

  Sir Giles ceased his peregrination, fiddled with his scarf, and gave Knollis a frank and direct stare. “I dunno, I’m sure. If it comes to that, why shouldn’t I? I mean, I really did see the thing!”

  “You haven’t realised your position, have you?” Knollis asked with equal frankness.

  “My position?” Sir Giles murmured vaguely. “Have I got one, Inspector?”

  “A very awkward one on the face of it, Sir Giles. You came here to meet Manchester on business, and went to the cactus house to wait for him. You say that you got fed up with waiting, and went for a walk in the hurst. You say that you saw an axe leaning against the wall. You say that it would be a handy spot for it if anyone considered the killing of Manchester. You say that you left the premises shortly before Manchester was killed. Now do you see what I am driving at? All circumstantial evidence, admitted, but distinctly awkward for you.”

  “Good lo-ord!” exclaimed Sir Giles. “You mean that I am a potential—heck, Inspector! Have some sense. Do I look like a killer? I ask you!”

  Knollis relaxed his features, and even allowed a smile to tinge them. “Tell me, Sir Giles; what does a killer look like?”

  Sir Giles pondered the question, and then nodded glumly. “I see the point. A killer can look like anybody else, can’t he? You mean that he isn’t a type—Lombroso and all that. You mean that me, and you, and your sergeant are all potential killers. Mm! I suppose you are right. And that makes it damned awkward for me, doesn’t it?” he added cheerfully.

  “You’ve read Lombroso?” asked Knollis.

  “Oh heck, yes! His theory went flop several decades ago, didn’t it? It’s all finger-prints, and modus operandi, and black museums, and all that nowadays, isn’t it?”

  He suddenly broke off, put a hand to his mouth, and said: “Glory be!”

  “Why so?” asked Knollis anxiously.

  “Finger-prints,” said Sir Giles. “If you find that axe you’ll find mine all over it. I picked it up and sort of swung it. As a matter of fact I was mentally connecting Manchester with the edge of the blade.”

  “You didn’t like him?”

  Sir Giles bit his lower lip, and shook his head. “Couldn’t stand him. He was a nasty piece of work. I never understood what Milly saw in him—but then she’s a good woman and can’t see evil· in anybody. A hell of a life she’d have had with him if she’d been capable of seeing straight. He was such an exacting—but we must not be abusive about the dead, eh?”

  “You know,” said Knollis, “I’m not so sure that I shouldn’t give you the usual caution. Everything tends to incriminate.”

  Sir Giles laughed. “Judges’ rules, and all that? Oh, you needn’t bother, Inspector. I’m as innocent as the proverbial new-born lamb.”

  “You’ve read a fair amount of criminology. Am I correct?” asked Knollis.

  “Crime and aircraft are my only two interests,” Sir Giles replied. “You must run up to Knightswood and have a look round. I’ve built a miniature landing-ground behind the house and fly my own Austerchild from it. Then gliding, of course! I go into Derbyshire almost every week-end. No, Inspector; sorry and all that, but I haven’t time for doin’ murders and being hanged for ’em.”

  “An awkward question for you,” Knollis murmured. “Have you an occupation, or are you a gentleman of leisure and independent means?”

  “Me?” Sir Giles laughed. “I’m the busiest man in the district with one thing and another. Among other pursuits I’m trying to form a flying club on a site at the other side of town. That is why I came to see Manchester—”

  “I thought the reason would emerge in due course.” Knollis smiled.

  “Well, you could have had that for the asking!” Sir Giles protested. “I was trying to get him to invest in it.”

  “Am I correct in suggesting that Manchester let you down pretty badly some time ago?”

  “That’s true enough,” he replied glumly. “He egged me on to sink some money in what proved to be a phoney company. The shares ebbed badly, and I thought I was stranded. Manchester came to the rescue—his own words—and offered to buy Baxmanhurst from me. I had to sell, damn his hide! A month later he made me an offer for the dud shares, and like a fool I sold. Two months afterwards they rose to forty-two shillings. Freddy, in short, had wangled me. I knew nothing whatsoever about markets, and I must have been easy game.”

  “And yet you were prepared to play with him again?” Knollis asked incredulously.

  There was a certain naiveté in Sir Giles’s reply.

  “I figured it out this way, Inspector. He had done me for several thousand pounds, and I didn’t see why he shouldn’t help me to get back on my feet. Law of compensation and all that. I do know my aviation, and I could have kept a check on him.”

  “And now that he is dead?”

  Sir Giles shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll have to find someone else with money. There are no two ways about it, are there?”

  Knollis was silently thoughtful for a minute, and then he lifted his head and looked slowly at Sir Giles.

  “Who do you think killed Fred Manchester?”

  “Damned if I know,” he replied. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, but good luck to him or her. Sorry for Milly and all that, but I’ve no personal regrets over Freddy. Of course, it’s rotten having a murder in the village, and especially in what was once my own house, but I’m not sorry that he’s gone. Further to the point, and I’m being really frank here, I’ve done a spot of thinking on the way down, and I think Milly may be prepared to sell Baxmanhurst back to me. I’ll have to arrange a whopping mortgage, but I’ve been tormented by the ghosts of ten generations of Tanroys since I sold.”

  “So that you can benefit by Manchester’s death?” Knollis said accusingly.

  “Mm—yes! If you put it that way, I can. Indirectly, of course. Does that make it look blacker still for me?”

  “It doesn’t improve matters,” Knollis admitted gloomily, “but I shall be disappointed if it does turn out to be you.”

  Sir Giles nodded. “So shall I! Makes my neck ache to even think of it.”

  Knollis toyed with a paper-clip that he found lying on the writing-table. “Look, Sir Giles; you needn’t answer this question if you don’t feel inclined, but suppose—and I do say suppose—that you had killed Manchester with the axe, and wanted to hide it; where would you have put it?”

  Sir Giles took out his cigarette case, and opened it. His hand remained poised over a cigarette as he thought about the question, and it did not tremble.

  “Oh well,” he said at last, “that is comparatively simple, me knowing the place. At the east end of the cactus house, behind a pile of bushes and shrubs, is a water-butt. I think I should have chucked it in there.”

  “A water-butt?” exclaimed Knollis. “I certainly never noticed it.” He turned his head. “Ellis!”

  Ellis left the study, and the two men faced each other in silence. Then Sir Giles shuffled uncomfortably. “I suppose it does look pretty grim for me, but I do assure you that I didn’t knock him off. I mean, such things simply aren’t done. I’d plenty against him, but I don’t bear malice, and I was going to let him stew in his own juice, and settle it with his own conscience—time having its own revenges and all that.”

  Ellis returned, shaking his head. “It’s not there, sir, but I think it has been. It looks to me as if something or other has
been rinsed in the water-butt, because there are splashes down the side—and it hasn’t rained for several days.”

  Knollis turned to Sir Giles. “Can you give me any information on the source of the axe?”

  Sir Giles shook his head. “Looked like one of those A.R.P. axes to me. This place was used as the local warden post until the official one was built. Temple was in charge of the equipment.”

  “Temple?” mused Knollis. “He seems to keep bobbing in and out of this affair, and I haven’t seen him yet. Well, Sir Giles, I must thank you for volunteering your information.”

  When he had left, Knollis tapped his pencil on the table in a thoughtful manner. “Ellis, I think you should get the Trentingham fellows organised on a weapon hunt.”

  CHAPTER V

  THE EVASION OF DANA VAUGHAN

  Desmond Brailsford was knocking on the study door almost before Sir Giles Tanroy was out of the house, and asking, in his peculiarly high-pitched voice, for permission to enter. “I want to go into town in half an hour or so, Inspector,” he said, “so I thought I’d better call on you now.”

  “The interview will be pointless,” Knollis said subtly, “unless you have anything to tell me about the causes of Manchester’s death.”

  Brailsford further distorted his features as he registered intense thought. “I don’t really think there is anything I can tell you—except that somebody was talking under my window about the time that Fred was killed. Perhaps I should say just before he was killed.”

  “Which is your room?” Knollis enquired keenly.

  “First floor; the room on the north-east corner. There are two windows; one facing east, and one to the north. The voices were under the north window, of course.”

  “Interesting information,” commented Knollis. “Did you recognise either of the voices—or both?”

  “Well,” Brailsford said slowly, and it almost seemed reluctantly, “one was definitely Fred’s. The other sounded like a woman’s voice. I wasn’t really listening, because I wasn’t interested. I didn’t know that anything untoward was happening. We never do, do we?”

  “We do not,” Knollis agreed. “That is one of the great difficulties we encounter when interviewing witnesses. Tell me, Mr. Brailsford; how long have you known Manchester?”

  “Oh, for years, on and off,” he replied casually, “but it was only during the past two years that we became friends as distinct from acquaintances.”

  “Your business interests brought you together, I presume?” Knollis suggested.

  Brailsford shook his head, and his lips achieved even more of a leer than usual. “No! It was a mutual interest in beer drinking more than anything else. I used to drop across him in London, in a pub in Wardour Street, at odd times, and we sort of gravitated together.”

  Knollis leaned back in his chair and played with his pencil. “Do you mind telling me the nature of your occupation, Mr. Brailsford?”

  Brailsford laughed, and his left eye stared at the ceiling while his right one winked at Knollis. “I have an interest in a small publishing firm.”

  “Was Manchester in any way connected with the firm?”

  “Yes and no,” Brailsford replied. “He had an idea for writing a book on cactuses—or should I say cacti? Anyway, he seemed to realise that he had no literary ability, and I was going to arrange a ghost for him whenever he settled down to write it. I think he must have been reading adverts in the papers, because he wanted to be an author in one easy lesson. All you need is pen, ink, and paper. Y’know the stuff!”

  “And in return?” Knollis asked simply.

  Brailsford grinned. “You’re nobody’s fool, are you, Inspector?”

  “I hope not,” Knollis replied. “Not often, that is!”

  Brailsford considered the remark for a half-minute, and then stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. “This being a murder investigation, I suppose I’d better be perfectly frank with you, because if you know your job you’ll find out what I don’t tell you.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” said Knollis.

  “A compliment, when sincere, is merely an expression of the truth, Inspector. I was hoping to get Fred to sink a couple of thou. in the firm. I’d like to branch out a bit more. Our scope is too restricted for my liking.”

  “You often come to Baxmanhurst?” Knollis asked.

  “Three or four week-ends a year, and I occasionally drop in mid-week for a few days. Just depends what there is on in town.”

  Knollis grunted. “I may take it that you knew Manchester pretty well?”

  “Ye-es, quite well, I think!”

  “What kind of a man was he—to you?”

  Brailsford wrinkled his nose in what may or may not have been an unconscious gesture of disgust. “Hail-fellow-well-met on the surface, and as shrewd as a rat under it. He liked a drink, and a game of cards, and he wasn’t below taking an interest in a pretty woman if it could be done discreetly. Very sharp in business, and very open-handed out of it. Too open-handed, actually. Fred always overdid it.”

  “In what way?” Knollis ventured.

  “Overtipping is a good example,” Brailsford replied. “Where you and I would leave ten per cent, and perhaps not as much as that, Fred would leave thirty or forty. Damned silly, actually, because it marked him out as a fellow who wasn’t used to money—and that was something he was always trying to make out he was.”

  “It seems to have been a very marked trait in his character,” commented Knollis. “Other people have remarked on the same idiosyncrasy. He was sensitive about his lack of education, and his position in the social scale? You would agree with those criticisms?”

  Brailsford cocked his left eye at the lamp-shade, and gave a hearty laugh. “You’ve soon got a handle on Fred’s character, Inspector! I said you were no fool. Fred was as touchy as a frog!”

  Knollis affected an air of surprise. “Are frogs touchy, Mr. Brailsford?”

  Brailsford gave a sharp laugh which irritated Knollis. “Touch one with the sharp end of a piece of straw and see for yourself. Freddy was like that, only he developed a carapace for himself. He was all right as long as he could keep up the bluff, but once you’d poked underneath it he’d squirm like the devil.”

  “You’ve tried it?” Knollis said softly.

  “Oh, just for devilment,” Brailsford replied easily. “That was one way of getting your way with him. As long as he was the lord of the manor and cock of the muckheap you could do nothing with him, but if you pricked him and reduced his inflated ego he’d agree with you in order to get back in your good books. That was when Milly used to catch it hot!”

  Knollis showed renewed interest, and the distaste faded from his keen features. “You mean . . . ?” Brailsford waved an airy hand. “It’s common knowledge in the house that he used to give her hell. He’d use her as a whipping boy, and take it out of her when somebody else had taken it out of him—and then he’d have a fit of contrition and do everything he could to make it up to her. A very elemental type was Fred. But mind you, he’d never apologise openly! Oh dear, no! He’d show his remorse in a dozen ways, but no apologies for Fred!”

  He lit a cigar and then twisted his head so that he appeared to be looking at Knollis with his right ear. “You know, Inspector; Milly is a saint. Nobody else would have put up with him.”

  “You did, apparently,” Knollis said softly.

  “Ah yes, but that was different. I didn’t have to live with him, and as I’ve said I’d be frank I’ll also add that I was hoping to get something out of him. I guess that will shock you, Inspector!” he sniggered.

  “I’m a recorder of facts, not a judge of ethics,” Knollis said frigidly.

  Brailsford’s features relaxed. “Anyway, he was a good companion in a man’s sense, but I’m darned glad that I wasn’t his wife!”

  Knollis scribbled idly on the pad as he asked: “Tell me, Mr. Brailsford; what do you know about Miss Vaughan?”

  “Dana? Well, not much, Inspector. She�
��s an actress, and a fine lady. I’ve a great deal of respect for her. She has a warm heart, and a pretty good brain.” Knollis eyed his man narrowly as he asked him the next question. “It couldn’t have been her voice you heard under your window this evening?”

  Brailsford started, and stammered. “I—I hadn’t thought of that when I told you, Inspector. Still—no, it couldn’t have been.”

  “And why not?” demanded Knollis. “Have you evidence to the contrary?”

  “Well, no,” said Brailsford, shuffling a foot on the carpet. “It might have been. Again, it might not. I can’t say. Why do you ask? Do you think it likely?”

  “I must reserve the right to ask the questions,” Knollis replied gravely. “There are only four women in the house. You are well acquainted with the household, and cannot say which of them it might have been. You cannot suggest the presence of a fifth woman, can you?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” said Brailsford. “There’s the day-girl, but I believe that she leaves about four o’clock. Besides, this voice was cultured, and the day-girl uses the local dialect.”

  Knollis rose as an indication that the interview was at an end. “Thanks, Mr. Brailsford. You are not likely to leave Baxmanhurst for a few days?”

  “I’ll stick around,” said Brailsford. “I want to see how the affair ends, and I have no pressing business in London.”

  Ellis sauntered across to the desk when Brailsford had left the room. “Doesn’t seem to be much there, sir!”

  “I’m not sure,” Knollis replied slowly. “I’m interested in the fellow. That is, I’m interested in his deformity.”

  “Rather a mess, certainly,” Ellis agreed.

  Knollis gave a grim smile. “I don’t mean his facial deformity, Ellis, but the corresponding mental twist. He is a sadist. I don’t suggest that he was responsible for Manchester’s decease, but I’m interested in the relationship between them. You took full notes of the conversation.”

  “Verbatim.” Ellis nodded.

  “Good. Now I wonder if you can find Miss Vaughan for me. A short interview with her, and we can close shop for to-night. Leave your notes. I’ll have a look through them. See,” he added with a grin, “I can read your shorthand, can’t I?”