The Threefold Cord

by Francis Vivian

  “This is a bright job, and no mistake!” Ellis exclaimed. “Still, the end must justify the dirty work!”

  “Exactly,” agreed Knollis. “We aren’t playing at dustbin-emptiers for fun. What’s that?”

  He bent down and scraped amongst the rubbish.

  “Four crown caps,” said Ellis.

  “Yes,” said Knollis, “but look at this one. It has been in a fire. Very interesting indeed. Collect all the others, Ellis, and put them in the car. I’ll keep this one in my pocket. See, our next call will be on the local doctor.”

  Dr. Denstone was not at home, but Knollis traced him to a club in Trentingham, and there cornered him.

  “I don’t like disturbing your leisure hours, but I’m in urgent need of information which you can supply.”

  “Chloral hydrate again?” the doctor asked with a smile.

  “Not exactly,” said Knollis. “I’m enquiring about Mrs. Manchester’s health over the past year. Has she at any time during this period been under you for nerve trouble?”

  “Yes, she has, Inspector. I hope you don’t want to know anything more intimate about her!”

  “I’m afraid that I do,” said Knollis, “and I’d like you to relax your confidence as far as you possibly can, For instance, did she ever ask you for sedatives?”

  The doctor hesitated. “Well, yes, she did!”

  “And did you prescribe a tonic instead?”

  “Yes, I did, Inspector.”

  “So that at no time has she ever had veronal, barbitone, or chloral hydrate on a prescription supplied by you?”

  The doctor looked alarmed. “Good God, no! Why on earth do you ask?”

  “Because she asked Miss Vaughan to obtain those three drugs for her. To the best of my knowledge and belief she has never taken any of them, but they are present in the house. Further to the point, I am now satisfied that Desmond Brailsford was responsible for doping Temple—from Miss Vaughan’s store.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” exclaimed the doctor.

  “No, Brailsford will be damned—unless another idea floating round my mind comes to fruition.”

  The doctor scratched his head. “This is an astonishing development. Is there any other way in which I can help you?”

  “Yes, and I rather think that you will jib at answering this question. Earlier in the case, when I was interviewing Mrs. Manchester, she was lauding her husband, and said that he would have made an excellent father if circumstances had not made it impossible for her to bear them for him. My question is simply this: Was there any physical reason why she could not bear children?” Dr. Denstone hesitated a moment, and then reluctantly answered: “A doctor is supposed to regard as sacred the affairs of his patient, you know!”

  “I know,” Knollis replied. “The Hippocratic oath is observed even when not sworn. What things soever I shall hear in my practice . . .”

  The doctor shook his head sadly. “There are times when one wonders which is the right course to take.” He squared his shoulders. “I believe I am doing right! I will answer your question, Inspector. There was no physical reason why Mrs. Manchester should not have borne children to her husband. She was physically healthy. Mentally, well, she was worried about something or other, and I am not a psychiatrist! I tried to send her to a specialist, but she would have none of it. She said it was a matter for a priest, and that she was haunted.”

  “Yes,” said Knollis, “haunted by the ghost of a hangman.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE ACUMEN OF COLONEL MOWBRAY

  Knollis was at Baxmanhurst very early the next morning, asking that Mrs. Manchester should be made aware of his presence and of his desire to talk with her. She was at breakfast, and made him wait, a fact which did not annoy Knollis in the least. He smiled at Freeman as she delivered Mrs. Manchester’s message to the effect that she would be along presently, and he smiled at Ellis and pushed him gently towards the study door.

  “We may as well have a smoke, Watson. The lady needs time to think. She may suspect my errand.”

  “I see,” said Ellis, “she doesn’t know that we know her brother, but she has to shield him all the same!”

  “I wouldn’t say that she is trying to shield him,” Knollis said quietly. “Up to now she has done her best to push him into the ditch. Anyway, let us smoke and meditate, and await the good lady’s pleasure. After all, we are only police officers, you know!”

  “Going to say anything to her about the Barston affair?” asked Ellis.

  “Who knows?” Knollis said mysteriously.

  Ellis gave a deep sigh and resigned himself. When Knollis grew mysterious it was time to see a magistrate with regard to the swearing of a warrant. He wondered idly if Desmond Brailsford, né Daniel Marlin, was in the house, and, not so idly, if he would make a dash for it when he smelled danger.

  His reflections were disturbed as the door opened, and Mrs. Manchester walked into the room. She walked to the table, and Ellis arose and gently closed the door behind her.

  “You wished to speak to me, Inspector?” she said in a formal tone.

  “It isn’t anything important,” Knollis replied casually. “I just want to check upon a few details. Do allow me to get you a chair.”

  “There is one here. There is no need for you to rise, Inspector. Now . . . ?”

  “Earlier in the week,” began Knollis, “you mentioned that you met your husband on a cruise. I wonder if you can tell me why you went on that cruise?”

  Mildred Manchester stared at him. “For my health, and because I wanted a complete change and a rest. I told you that, Inspector.”

  “Yes, yes, so you did,” said Knollis, making a pretence of examining his notes. “Perhaps it was Miss Vaughan who suggested that you should go?”

  She shook her head. “I did not know her then.”

  “You went on the cruise without knowing a single person on board?” Knollis asked in an incredulous tone.

  “Perhaps I could suggest that Mr. Brailsford put the idea into your head?”

  “Mr. Brailsford?” she gasped.

  Knollis looked at his notes. “I have good reason to· believe that you were acquainted with him before you booked for the cruise.”

  “Well, yes, I did know him slightly, and he may have mentioned it casually, but I am not conscious of the fact that he specifically suggested the cruise to me.”

  “But he could have done so?” Knollis persisted.

  “He could have done so, but I don’t say that he did,” Mildred Manchester replied.

  Knollis stared at his notes for a full minute, and then slowly raised his head. “Now that I am aware of your maiden name, Mrs. Manchester—”

  “My God!” she interrupted. She covered her face with her hands. “Is this thing going to follow me right to the very edge of the grave?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Knollis. “We can be discreet, you know! The only reason I mentioned it is because I think the fact may have some bearing on your husband’s death—indirectly, I should add.”

  Mildred Manchester’s hands slowly fell from her face, and her wide eyes regarded him curiously.

  “We have evidence,” Knollis went on, “suggestive of the fact that Desmond Brailsford was aware of your secret and was blackmailing you—threatening to tell your husband unless you paid him certain sums of money. Can you deny or verify that surmise?”

  She fidgeted with her hands. The first two fingers of her right hand were unbandaged, but inflamed, and she stroked them continually with her left hand.

  “He—wasn’t—blackmailing me,” she said slowly. “I have lent him money from time to time.”

  “You admit that he knew your secret?”

  “Yes, he knew my secret.”

  “And Miss Vaughan? She was also aware of it?”

  “Yes,” Mildred Manchester replied. “She knew, too. I told her myself, two years ago.”

  “And yet she knew of it four years ago!” said Knollis bluntly.

 
; Mildred Manchester shook her head. “I—I don’t think she did?”

  “Then,” asked Knollis, “where did she find the theme of her play, The Hempen Rope? She learned it on the cruise, Mrs. Manchester, and you must know that yourself!”

  “I have wondered,” she said.

  “She was told by your friend, Brailsford,” said Knollis. “I have it in her own signed statement.”

  Mildred Manchester straightened her back. Her eyes narrowed, and she gazed deeply into Knollis’s eyes. “Desmond told her. . . . ! So that was it! It was Desmond!”

  Knollis, satisfied with the interview so far, decided to change the subject.

  “In a previous interview, Mrs. Manchester, you told me that you were unable to bear children for your husband. I realise that the subject is a very delicate one, but would you care to say why?”

  She slumped again, and became a dismal figure. “Isn’t that obvious, Inspector? You know my secret! How could I bear children for my husband? I, the daughter of a public hangman! The Fates themselves would have cursed it at its birth. No, let the Marlins die out!”

  “The Marlins?” said Knollis softly. “So you had a sister, Mrs. Manchester?”

  She shook her head coldly. “No, a brother, and he is best forgotten. A thing with a warped mind that should never have been born!”

  “A brother,” said Knollis. “Where is he now, Mrs. Manchester? Still in this country?”

  “I have not set eyes on Daniel these past fifteen years—oh, quite fifteen years,” she replied. “I have disowned him as my brother. If I saw him I should regard him as a stranger.”

  “I see,” said Knollis, and returned to his notes.

  “Is there anything else?” Mildred Manchester asked after an uncomfortable pause.

  “The silk cords,” said Knollis; “I would like to ask two questions regarding them. Did you, on discovering your dead budgerigar, immediately recognise the blue cord as being from your workbox?”

  “Oh yes, immediately,” she replied.

  “Did you go to the box to verify that?”

  She shook her head. “Not immediately, Inspector. I was terribly upset by the sight of its poor little body, and I rushed downstairs to find my husband and tell him.”

  “You found him?”

  “He was still breakfasting. I had left him.”

  “What did he say when you informed him that the bird had been killed?” asked Knollis.

  “He—he just laughed!”

  “Mrs. Manchester,” said Knollis; “we agreed the other day that your husband was responsible for the deaths of the bird and the cat. Now then; did your husband know that you were Marlin’s daughter?”

  She lowered her eyes. “He did—and I think that either Desmond or Dana told him.”

  “Then perhaps you will agree with me that his action in killing your pets was in the nature of a cruel joke, intended to hurt you for having dared to marry him?”

  “Yes.” Mildred Manchester nodded. “Yes, I do believe that myself.”

  “Now,” said Knollis, “on your examination of the workbox, was all the embroidery silk missing, or merely the one strand which was found round the neck of the budgerigar?”

  “It was all missing, Inspector—all the blue, that is.”

  “I see,” said Knollis. “That is a most important point. It indicates that the killing of the cat was premeditated at the time of the death of the budgie.”

  Mildred Manchester inclined her head. “I see your argument, Inspector.”

  “You told me,” said Knollis, “that when this case is cleared up you intend to sell Baxmanhurst back to Sir Giles Tanroy. Where in England do you intend to settle?”

  “Probably somewhere on the south coast,” she replied.

  “I see,” said Knollis again. “Well, I think that will be all, Mrs. Manchester, and thank you for bearing with these interminable questions. I regret that I have to embarrass you in such a manner. Ellis!”

  Ellis slipped his notebook in his pocket and rose to open the door for her. She made a dignified exit.

  “Now what,” said Ellis as he closed the door.

  “Get Freeman,” Knollis said shortly.

  Freeman was herself again now that the shadow had passed from her own and Smithy’s lives, and if anything she was more perky than she had ever been—and that may have been due to her own sense of importance in the case. She flounced into the room, and made a mock curtsy to Knollis. “Here I am, sir!”

  “Take a pew,” said Knollis. “You understand that anything I may say to you is to be regarded as confidential until such time as you are examined in court?”

  She pointed a finger at her own bosom. “Me, in court? Oh lord!”

  Knollis smiled. “The chance of a lifetime. The reporters will all be making references to the pretty housemaid from Baxmanhurst who gave her evidence in such a lively manner and helped Scotland Yard so expertly!”

  Freeman preened under the praise, and Ellis winked heartily at Knollis.

  “You remember last Sunday morning, when Mrs. Manchester found the budgie dead in her room? Well, did you go upstairs to have a look at it?”

  “Oh yes! Madame came screaming downstairs, and I rushed up to see what was wrong.”

  “So that you saw the blue cord round the bird’s neck?”

  Freeman nodded. “Oh yes, sir!”

  “You recognised it?” asked Knollis.

  “It was out of her workbox,” said Freeman.

  “You are sure of that?” Knollis said.

  “Well, I looked in the box, and I’m certain that most of it had gone!” Freeman said indignantly.

  “Ah . . . !” exclaimed Knollis with a deep sigh. “Most of it had gone! Not all?”

  “No, sir.”

  Knollis looked at her keenly. “Your position being what it is—that is, I mean to say, that you are more or less responsible for the whole household’s comfort—you—er—well, you get around the house pretty well; more than the average housemaid? Is that correct?”

  “Why, yes, sir,” she answered in a puzzled tone.

  “Since last Sunday morning, have you seen any of that blue silk anywhere else but in Mrs. Manchester’s workbox?”

  Freeman stared. She hesitated. And then she licked her upper lip and nodded dumbly.

  “You did!” said Knollis. “Where did you see it?”

  “In—in Freddy’s drawer when I was putting his clean shirts away. It was about so long,” she explained, holding her hands perhaps eighteen inches apart.

  “And after that, did you look in the workbox again?”

  “I—yes, sir, I did! I was curious, and I—well—”

  “Don’t apologise,” Knollis said curtly. “You are doing very well indeed, and helping me a lot. How much of the silk was left in the workbox when you looked?”

  “None, sir. It had all gone.”

  Knollis went back to his notes. When he again looked up he asked: “You should be familiar with the habits of this household, Miss Freeman. I wonder if you can tell me whether Freddy emptied his pockets every night when he went to bed?”

  “Oh yes, he did,” she said quickly. “I have noticed that when I have taken the morning tea in. He used to pile everything on the dressing-table.”

  “Thank you,” said Knollis. “Do you get many tips in this house?”

  “Miss Dana gives me ten shillings a week, and Mr. Brailsford gives me an occasional pound.”

  “I see,” said Knollis. “Did Mr. Brailsford seem to tip you regularly, or just when he felt like it?” Freeman considered. “It was generally when Miss Dana had been down to the bank. He told me that she cashed his cheques for him, because he didn’t like going out a great deal, on account of his—you know! He told me that once when he’d been here for three week-ends and hadn’t given me anything.”

  “Thanks,” said Knollis. “That will be all—but wait a minute! Who cleans the ashes from the fireplaces?”

  “Why, I do!” Freeman answered in a surpr
ised tone. “Can you remember a crown cap being amongst the ashes at any time during the past week?”

  Freeman’s eyes brightened. “That was Tuesday, sir—Wednesday morning when I found the cap. I thought it was funny, and I went to the larder to count the bottles and I said to myself that somebody would catch it when Mrs. Redson found that an extra one had gone. You see, sir, she is a very close sort of woman, and she reckons so many bottles for so many days, and starts asking questions if her calculations go wrong.”

  “Now why should you think that way?” said Knollis. “Surely the guests aren’t limited in a house like this?”

  “It wasn’t that, sir,” said Freeman, struggling with her thoughts, “it was—well, Freddy was the only one in the house who drinks bottled beer, and it meant that someone had swiped one. Taken one, sir. I was going to ask Smithy if he had pulled a fast one on Mrs. Redson, although he doesn’t like bottled stuff as a rule, and then it slipped my memory.”

  “Which grate was it in?” asked Knollis.

  “The kitchen grate, sir.”

  “That will be all for now,” said Knollis. “Thanks.” As soon as Freeman was clear of the room, Knollis reached for his hat. “Come on, my Ellis! We have an interview or two in Trentingham—one of them a much-belated one to which I should have attended earlier in the case. And then I think we can see about a warrant.”

  Manchester’s solicitor regarded them cynically as they trooped into his office. He was a lean man, with silvery hair and a long face, and long fingers which he insisted on cracking throughout the interview, to Knollis’s intense annoyance.

  “So you would like to know the minor bequests in Manchester’s will? Colonel Mowbray was round an hour ago, and I gave him a copy of the will.”

  Knollis flashed a glance at Ellis. The Chief Constable was getting either impatient with them, or was fancying his own chances as a detective.

  “Anyway,” said the solicitor, “the will is several months old, and not particularly sensational. He leaves Mrs. Manchester an annuity of a thousand a year, and the interest from his holdings in Manchester Furnishings for the period of her lifetime. On Mrs. Manchester’s decease the whole estate goes to two young nephews, aged twelve and fourteen respectively. Minor bequests? A thousand pounds to a Desmond Brailsford ‘for friendship shown,’ and a thousand to Miss Dana Vaughan, the actress—without comment.”