The Heel of Achilles: A Golden Age Mystery

by E.

  “Careless blighter, Doctor. Putting wet glasses down on a table like that,” he said. “Had a fellow like it in the Mess once. Outsider—plenty of paper mats. But would he use them? Would he, blazes. This chap Canley is the same.”

  The doctor ignored the lamentable lack of culture in the defunct Mr. Canley. He engaged instead in some intent consideration of the glass and the marks left by it on the table. He looked from one to the other, and back again.

  “Deucedly interesting,” he announced.

  “What is?” asked the Chief Constable.

  “All this, Mainforce.” He drew the attention of Merry to the set-up. The deputy scientist regarded the rings, and the tumbler with the fingerprints showing up against the colourless composition of the glass. He caught the eyes of his chief, but said nothing.

  A clatter came from the distance. “Here’s Ypres,” announced the Chief Constable. “I’d know the sound of her engine in a thousand.”

  “So would I,” Manson laughed. “Even above the roar of battle,” he added.

  The car came to silence, and the front door of the cottage opened. Doctor Manson took from Inspector Mackenzie the cards on which had been rolled the fingerprints of the dead Canley. Together he and Merry compared them with the prints showing up on the tumbler and the bottle.

  “Well?” demanded the Chief Constable.

  “Oh, they’re Canley’s all right,” replied Manson. “Not a doubt about it.”

  “And nobody else’s on the glass or the bottle,” pointed out Mackenzie. “Doesn’t that show that he was here alone. And that he was drinking before he went out?”

  Doctor Manson looked round the room. His eyes brightened at the appearance of another couple of tumblers, standing together on a sideboard, and accompanied with a carafe of water. Taking each in turn with the handkerchief, he held them up to the light, and then placed them on the table. Merry intervened in the proposed use of the insufflator.

  “Just a minute, Doctor,” he said, and moved a foot farther round, from which angle he eyed the tumblers keenly.

  Doctor Manson, joining him, followed the direction of his deputy’s eyes. Rays of the electric light striking through the glass gave the tumblers a slight, and decidedly unusual, iridescence.

  “A bit odd?” suggested Merry.

  “Very,” Manson agreed. He laid one of the glasses aside and puffed the grey powder over the other. It fell evenly, and when gently blown to remove surplus powder from any prints that might show, all of it went off. There were no fingerprints.

  With a grunt, he packed the second of the glasses into a wrapping of tissue paper, and placed it in the Box of Tricks.

  Similar examination of the carafe of water gave results no different from the tumbler.

  “It gets odder and odder,” declared the scientist. An undercurrent of satisfaction crept into his voice.

  “This is definitely the queerest room it has ever been my fortune to examine,” he concluded.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  “Odder and odder.” The Chief Constable echoed the words. “What is there odd about it, Manson?”

  “Just a moment, Colonel,” begged the scientist. “Let us see if the woman can throw any light on the matter.” Inspector Mackenzie bellowed her name from the door.

  Mrs. Skelton loomed in the doorway and came forward, slowly. She was a tall, angular woman of forbidding mien, sharp-featured, with a pointed prominent nose, and an air which radiated dolefulness and criticism at one and the same time. Her tight, thin lips pressed to whiteness as she looked round the assembly in the dining-room. There was a pause the while she weighed them up in her own way. Then:

  “You wanted me?” The query came arrogantly.

  Doctor Manson countered with a charming smile. “Yes, Mrs. Skelton,” he said. “We were wondering if you could help us to find out what sort of a person Mr. Canley was. His habits, and so on.”

  “Ho!” She drew herself up to her full, lean height. “If its habits you want, them as I did see was pretty bad, if I may say—”

  “You may, woman,” put in the Chief Constable.

  “Mind yer, it wasn’t much of ’im as I did see. I ’as me livin’ to h’earn, so I does me duty and nothing more. If I was to poke me nose into the ’abits of them I works for, I’d be h’out of work ’arf the time. I thinks I knows me place as well as the next one, and I can’t afford to be fussy, especially where there’s good pickings to be had, which ain’t easy these days.”

  Manson, trying to sort out information from this jumbled mass, seized on the last sentence. “Pickings, Mrs. Skelton,” he said quietly. “What would they be?”

  “Oh! Bits and pieces, odds and ends.” She suddenly tumbled to the implication of the question. “Come by honest, o’ course,” she added. “Though I wouldn’t like to make it me business as to where he got ’em. But what’s a body to do, sir, these days?” She began to whine. “Big family like I’ve got, odd bits is useful.”

  “I’ve no doubt they are.” Doctor Manson tried again. “What bits?” he asked.

  “Well, a bit o’ butter and cheese and mebbe a rasher or two, or the end of the joint. Plenty ’e ’ad just goin’ ter waste, and I will say as very generous e’ were whatever else ’e was, and whatever I thought of ’im.”

  “And what did you think of him, Mrs. Skelton?”

  “I wouldn’t soil me lips with the things I could say about that man.” Doctor Manson, looking at her, groaned. He saw the light of fanaticism in her eyes. “Wait till the Day of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts is opened,” she declaimed.

  “Can’t wait that long,” said the Chief Constable, unwisely. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Ye know not when your time will come,” roared Mrs. Skelton. “Prepare to meet thy God.” She turned back to Doctor Manson. “On that day such as ’im will be sorry for the lives they’ve led, the sin and lying and wicked dealings. Everlasting damnation and the fires of brimstone, that’s what will happen to him.”

  The woman stormed with evangelistic fervour. Beads of perspiration stood on her forehead, and her hands twisted round and round the towel which she was carrying when she entered the room. ‘A shade too righteous,’ thought Manson. ‘She’s probably a little anxious about those bits and pieces.’ Aloud he said, “Well, Mrs. Skelton, none of us is perfect. We should always remember the words of Bishop Bradford, you know.”

  Mrs. Skelton thought doggedly for a moment. Curiosity overcame her natural reluctance to admit ignorance of the sayings of a Lord Bishop.

  “What words?” she importuned.

  “There, but for the grace of God goes John Bradford,” quoted the doctor. “Now, tell me, Mrs. Skelton, with what do you polish the tumblers?” He pointed to the array on the table.

  The woman held up the towel in her hands. “With this ’ere,” she said. “Why? What’s the matter with ’em?”

  “Nothing at all, Mrs. Skelton, I assure you.” He took the towel and examined it closely. “You would not, I suppose, use paraffin on them at all?”

  “On the glasses?” Mrs. Skelton threw Christian forbearance to the winds at this reflection on her housekeeping. “On the glasses! I’d like you to know as I bin in service on and off since I was fourteen and I knows me job if h’anybody do. I never heard such a thing in all me born life. ’Ow long do yer think I’d a done for a gentleman if I’d washed his glasses in paraffin? You’re a’casting a slur on me h’ability as a housekeeper, that’s what you’re a doin’ of. I could ’ave the law on yer for that. Libellous, that’s what it is. Libellous—”

  “Slanderous,” said the Chief Constable, who was a stickler for legal accuracy.

  “Wot?”

  “I said slander, not libel. Madam. Libel has to be written.”

  Mrs. Skelton considered this unexpected set-back in silence for a moment. “Are you a’telling of me as I can’t have the law on yer for taking me character away?” she demanded.

  “No, Madam. I merely said that you couldn’t sue
us for libel, but you could sue us for alleged slander—”

  Doctor Manson chuckled. “Let’s get back to Mr. Canley,” he said. “You can go to law afterwards.” He turned towards the angry woman. “Now, Mrs. Skelton, nobody wants to insult or libel—slander—you,” he said. “We’re just men, you know, and know nothing of these kitchen affairs. I am sure you are a most praiseworthy housekeeper. I can see that by the state this house is in.” Mrs. Skelton deflated.

  “Well, I’m sure—”

  Manson dropped in hurriedly, lest another tirade began. “We were wondering, you see, if any paraffin could have come in contact with these glasses at all?”

  Mrs. Skelton sniffed. “H’impossible,” she said. “I never uses paraffin on cloths as has to be used for wiping up things. You don’t never keep paraffin in the kitchen ’cos the smell per . . .”

  “Permeates?” queried Doctor Manson, smilingly.

  “Permeates the place,” agreed Mrs. Skelton, “so it couldn’t have been in contact with the glasses.”

  The woman finished with a direct hit. “Anyway, there ain’t never bin any paraffin in the ’ouse,” she announced. “All the fires is gas and coke fires. There ain’t no need to use paraffin, since they ’ad the gas and electricity brought in the ’ouse, and a nice mess they made, too, a’getting of it in, a’taking up of all the floors—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure you had a terrible job coping with it,” hurriedly agreed Manson. “But to return to these glasses. I suppose you wash them after they have been used by Mr. Canley, and carry them from the kitchen back to this room?”

  “Well, really! I must say you don’t know much about housekeeping. Of course I washes ’em in the sink in the kitchen. There ain’t no other sink. Then I polishes ’em and brings ’em back here.” A flush came into her acid face. “Are you suggestin’ as I’ve taken any glass?” she demanded.

  “Of course we are not, Mrs. Skelton,” Doctor Manson assured her.

  “And after you have washed and polished them, what do you do with them?”

  “Puts ’em on the sideboard alongside o’ the bottle.”

  The words came with venom. Mrs. Skelton’s attitude towards the bottle demonstrated her unswerving belief that any man addicted to the use of a bottle containing strong drink of any kind was doomed to the fires of Hell, without the solace even of cool and plain water.

  “I see,” said Doctor Manson. “And I take it that you would have followed the usual practice with these glasses yesterday?”

  “That’s right.” She gave the impression that her habits were like unto the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not. “Did Mr. Canley have any visitors here at all?”

  The woman’s mouth set in a hard, thin line, and her eyes narrowed in fury.

  “Aye. His succubus,” she announced.

  The Chief Constable startled like a shying horse. “His what?” he gasped.

  “Succubus, I said.” Mrs. Skelton showed her distaste at having to repeat the lewd word.

  “And what might be her name, Mrs. Skelton?” asked Manson. “Succubus is what a church dignitary might call a Scarlet Woman,” he explained to the Chief Constable.

  “Mrs. Andover is what she calls herself,” announced Mrs. Skelton. She drew a deep breath. “He suffered the woman Jezebel,” she intoned. “And I gave her the space to repent of her fornication and she repented not. Behold I will cast her into bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation. Revelations,” explained Mrs. Skelton, passionately. “Mind you, I had naught to do with her. Me ’ands never touched her belongings. There’s some of ’em scattered upstairs now. And there they will remain. I ain’t dipped me ’ands in sin.”

  “If them upstairs is sin, would I be a sinner,” whispered Kenway to Merry. “There’s the cutest dressing-gown and pair of black undies I’ve ever set eyes upon.”

  “I am quite sure you have not, Mrs. Skelton,” comforted Doctor Manson. “Not even the sin of uncharitableness,” he added sarcastically. “Was Mrs. Andover a regular visitor?”

  “Aye. She comed here a lot.”

  “You don’t know whether she was here yesterday, I suppose?”

  “I don’t now. But I can soon find out.” She turned and left the room. The men heard the stairs creaking under her tread. She returned in a minute or two in a state of burning satisfaction.

  “Aye, her must ha’ been here,” she announced.

  “Why are you so sure?” demanded the doctor.

  “Because there’s some new black—black—”

  “Panties is the word,” chuckled Kenway.

  Mrs. Skelton turned baleful eyes upon him. “Ye son of Belial,” she hurled. “Ye—”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Skelton.” Doctor Manson poured oil on the troubled waters. “He’s a respectable married man, and his wife wears them, I expect. You mean that the black—er—thing-a-me-bobs were not there yesterday before you left?”

  “That’s right, Mister.”

  “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Skelton, for your assistance. You have been a great help to us. Now you can go home if you wish. We shall not want you again.”

  “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” thundered Mrs. Skelton.

  “He didn’t,” said Doctor Manson. The woman looked puzzled.

  “Didn’t what?” she asked.

  “God didn’t revenge on Canley. It was somebody human, you know.”

  The woman glared around her, turned and swept out of the room, banging the door with such vehemence that the glasses rattled on the table.

  “God bless me, what a woman!” The Chief Constable saw the back of her with relief. “I bet she still wears red flannel up to her neck and down to her knees. By the way, Manson, what is the point of the glasses. Getting faddy about polishing?”

  “Very faddy, Mainforce.” He drew attention to the glasses on the table. “Mrs. Skelton washed and polished these glasses yesterday. She carried them from the kitchen into this room, and placed them on the sideboard. Well and good. Then Canley, at some stage during the night, lifted one and brought it to the table. He also carried the bottle of whisky over. He poured himself out a drink. Follow me?”

  “I wish I was following Canley; I could do with a whisky and soda,” said the Chief Constable.

  “Right! Canley had a drink. He had, as a matter of fact, three or four drinks, because you see here the marks made by the glass each time he placed it on the table after imbibing some of the contents, and probably replenishing the glass from the bottle.[IV] Now look at his glass.”

  The Chief Constable peered at the circumference of the vehicle. He noted the fingerprints left by the powder puffed on it, and turned a puzzled look at the scientist.

  Inspector Kenway broke into the duologue. “There aren’t sufficient prints,” he suggested.

  “Oh!” The Chief Constable became excited.

  “Canley must have lifted the glass several times.” Doctor Manson illustrated the point. “Once to carry it from the sideboard, and presumably three times to raise it to his lips and partake of the contents. That is proved by the marks on the table. But there is only one set of prints on the glass, and they are not in any way superimposed.”

  “Furs and whiskers,” said the Chief Constable. “What about the bottle? That has only one set of prints.”

  “Only Canley touched the bottle,” Mackenzie reminded his Chief, dampingly.

  The Chief Constable exploded. “Damn and blast it, Mackenzie, I know that. The bottle’s more than half empty. What’s missing wouldn’t go in a tumbler. So the bottle must have been handled several times. There’s one print only, and old flannel says she has never polished the bottle.”

  “Says she!” Sergeant Bunny said hastily. “You know what these professed teetotallers are like. They tipple on the quiet. I’ve got a sister-in-law who runs down the drink. She’s generally got a bottle of beer in the scullery.”

  “And you reckon this Skelton woman might be the same?” asked the Chief
Constable. He looked round at the company. “She’d be cute enough to wipe her fingermarks off the glass, of course.”

  Inspector Mackenzie came to life again. “Then that would leave the one fingermark when Canley poured out a drink last night.”

  “Would it?” Doctor Manson smiled. It looked a wan smile. “You’ve overlooked the only point that’s worth anything.”

  “He’s at it again!” The Chief Constable looked very blank. “Mystery on mystery.”

  “There’s no mystery at all. It’s staring you in the face, if you’ll look for it. See if you can find an empty bottle with a cork in it, Sergeant, and we’ll make the Chief Constable show us the answer.”

  “Much better find a full one,” advised the Colonel. “And get the cork out,” he added. There was a chorus of approving gurgles. Sergeant Bunny laughed and left the room.

  “Only found a gin bottle, sir,” he announced on his return, and held it out. Doctor Manson took it.

  “It doesn’t matter what kind of a bottle, Sergeant. Now, Mainforce, you imagine this bottle is half full of gin.”

  “Is there any need to keep harping on drinks, Manson? On a cold day like this?”

  “And you want a drink,” went on the Doctor unperturbed at the interruption. He placed the bottle on the sideboard. “Go to it,” he said, “and pour out your imaginary tot.”

  The Chief Constable walked to the sideboard, and picked up the bottle. His fingers had reached the cork when the doctor interrupted. “Stay like that,” he called.

  The Colonel stayed. He looked like a photo-finish picture print of a drinking bout.

  “There, gentlemen, is the answer to the one point that really matters,” Doctor Manson advised. “Now, do you see what it is?”

  A few moments of silent reflection was shattered by the Chief Constable himself.

  “How the hell much longer,” he demanded, “am I to stand like a bloody waxwork exhibit?”

  “It is a matter of everyday observation, coupled with its application to this particular case,” the doctor continued, without answering the Colonel’s question. “Recall the markings on the bottle of whisky—the only marks. And consider.” He looked significantly at the hands of the Chief Constable.