The Attic Murder

by S. Fowler Wright

  Had she left no address to which letters could be forwarded? No, she had not. But the woman, who was neither unfriendly to himself, nor disposed to regard him as one whom a young lady would go far to avoid, added that as Miss Garten had been receiving letters up to the morning when she somewhat abruptly left, and as there had been none arriving subsequently, she supposed that the post office had been instructed to re-address them. Probably, therefore, a letter would reach her.

  Holding stubbornly to a poor hope, Francis waited at the foot of the stairs till the postman appeared. The man was civil, but not communicative. He admitted that he knew that Miss Garten had left. As to her letters being re-addressed, it was a matter between her and the post office, on which he was unable or unwilling to give a definite answer. If a letter were addressed to her, and were not returned, its delivery could be safely assumed.

  Francis narrated to the Inspector the poor tale of his first day’s experiences in the occupation which had been thrust upon him, supposing that he must incur the contempt which the expert may be expected to feel for the amateur’s bungling efforts. But he was surprised to be met with sympathetic and encouraging words. The detective, who did not think it necessary to say that he was already familiar with most of the facts he heard, Francis having been unobtrusively watched from the moment when he had left Mr. Jellipot’s office, approved the frankness of the account he received, and was aware that it is by a plodding persistence that the best results are obtained in the difficult profession to which he belonged. He recognized in Francis Hammerton a character of quiet obstinacy in which he had more confidence than he would have felt for more spectacular qualities.

  More valuable than an abstract approval, he suggested a method by which Miss Garten’s address might be obtained, even against her will.

  “You can’t hope to find her,” he said, “on the information you’ve got. All you know is that she isn’t in Scotland, to which we can add that she hasn’t gone overseas, and the whole of England and Wales is a vague address with which to begin.

  “If you send her a registered letter to Sheldon Gardens, the post office will re-address it, if they’ve got instructions to do so, but she isn’t bound to reply, in which case you’re no more forward by that. But if you pay an extra fee for the post office to give you proof of delivery, which they will do with a registered letter, providing it isn’t refused by the addressee, the delivery slip will bear the actual address at which the letter is taken in.

  “You’d better get a note off at once. If she answers, you might hear from her by Tuesday morning, and if she doesn’t, you’re quite likely to get an address by which you can follow her up.... But the fact is that the whole gang’s rather scattered about. They all get flurried when we make a pounce, and go off different ways, so that it’s as difficult as possible for us to keep track of them. It’s like a cat getting a pigeon. The other birds fly off in a dozen directions, and most of them stay for a time on the roofs, though they’ve got to come down again, sooner or later, to where the corn’s scattered about.

  “Well, don’t give up. You’ll be surprised how far you get, if you go on one step at a time.”

  Francis thanked him, and went back to his room to write a note to Augusta Garten through which he hoped to have the uncertain pleasure of meeting a lady by whose attractions he had fallen into his present predicament.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mr. Dunkover appeared again for the Crown. Mr. Huddleston, K.C., assisted by Mr. Augustus Pippin, represented the accused.

  Mr. Garrison, observing the eminent counsel who were to defend the accused, understood that it was not to be a case in which he would reserve any defence which he might be able to make until he should appear before the higher tribunal. The battle was to be joined at once, and seeing this, he made a quick mental revision of the time which he had calculated would be sufficient for dealing with it. Three days—possibly more. If both sides were prepared to go straight ahead, it meant a busy time for him during the coming week.

  He glanced with professional interest at the second man whom the police had put into the dock to answer the present charge. No doubt the right one this time. Inspector Combridge didn’t often make a mistake. The man didn’t look like a murderer. But then, murderers seldom do.

  He listened patiently to Mr. Dunkover’s opening statement, and to the routine preliminary evidence. It was as necessary as it was boring. But he could trust his clerk to see that no essential was overlooked: that the depositions would be all that would be required by the higher court. He only became more than outwardly alert when Sir Lionel Tipshift entered the box to describe the injury which had been inflicted on the deceased, and to theorize on how it could have been caused, as the expert is allowed to do.

  It appeared that the razor which had been found lying by the body, and which was, by an almost certain presumption, the weapon with which the crime had been committed, had been used twice, and with such savage strength that the neck of William Rabone, which had been short and thick, had been more than half cut through. One of the cervical vertebrae had been actually grazed by the blade, though it had not been severed. Death must have been almost instantaneous.

  He described, with sufficient technical detail, the evidence by which he confidently deduced that the first wound, which had commenced on the front and left side of the neck, had been inflicted by someone standing behind, and probably slightly to the left of his victim. Its direction, in view of William Rabone’s own height, indicated a rather tall man. If it were a woman, she must have been of unusual physique. The second wound had been inflicted, in his opinion, after the injured man had already fallen forward upon the floor.

  “Would it have been possible,” Mr. Dunkover asked, “for a man so wounded to have uttered a cry which would have penetrated to a lower floor of the house?”

  “It would have been possible after the infliction of the first wound, but not the second. The wounded man appears to have staggered forward two or three paces toward the door, possibly with a blind instinct of escape, before he fell. After he had done so, his assailant must have bent over him and inflicted the second wound.

  “Such a cry would have been uttered, if at all, during the moment before he fell.”

  “From the nature and direction of the wounds, can you say with certainty that they were not self-inflicted?”

  “Yes. I have no doubt at all.”

  “Can you assist the court with any further deduction as to the assailant, or the course of the crime?”

  “Only that there is a strong presumption that it was the work of a left-handed man.”

  “Thank you, Sir Lionel.”

  Mr. Dunkover sat down, and Mr. Huddleston rose to cross-examine the witness.

  “You have expressed the opinion, Sir Lionel, that this is a case of murder, not suicide?”

  “Yes. There can, in my opinion, be no reasonable doubt.”

  “Should you express that opinion with equal confidence, if it should appear that William Rabone may have had a very serious reason for self-destruction?”

  “I should still hold that opinion.”

  “But you would not say—as I understand you do not say even now—that it is definitely impossible that the wounds may have been self-inflicted?”

  “Not impossible, perhaps. I should call it a fantastic rather than an impossible theory.”

  “Do you base that opinion, partly at least, upon the extent of the wounds?”

  Mr. Huddleston asked the question in a quiet and casual tone, knowing inwardly that it was the one hope that he had of shaking the effect of the witness’s evidence, if he should oblige him with an affirmative answer. But Sir Lionel was too wary, and too sound in his surgical knowledge, to fall into the trap.

  “On the nature,” he answered, “not the extent.”

  There followed a long discussion between the learned counsel and the expert surgeon upon the nature, position, and extent of suicidal wounds, which need not be recorded in detai
l. Textbooks on forensic surgery were passed to the witness, and passages debated as bearing upon the evidence already given. But Sir Lionel’s arguments remained unshaken.

  Mr. Huddleston had not expected any other result. He knew that there was no reasonable doubt that it was a case of murder with which they dealt, though he had a very confident hope that he would be able to keep his client out of the legal net which was being spread for his destruction.

  But he knew that, as he prolonged the discussion, and raised every side-issue the facts allowed, that there was a constant possibility that something of real or apparent inconsistency would be said, such as could be used at the subsequent trial to shake the jury’s confidence in the witness, or otherwise confuse their minds.

  Sir Lionel, who understood the game perfectly well, fenced adroitly enough to foil Mr. Huddleston’s subtlest attempts, and, at the end of half an hour’s exchanges, counsel had done no more than to elicit that a man who has an inclination to cut his throat usually begins with two or three tentative superficial wounds, and then, as his frenzy of resolution grows, may strike with such savage force as to sever his neck, even from one side to the other. Not only so, but he may repeat the blows, time after time, either through a mechanical determination previously formed, or in a desperate effort to hasten the oblivion that delays to come. Counsel and surgeon agreed upon the authenticity of a recorded case in which a man had hacked at his own neck until the transverse process of the fifth cervical vertebra had been completely severed.

  Sir Lionel admitted readily that the extent of the wounds was not in itself an argument against suicide. He even conceded, as an abstract proposition, that it might be considered an argument on the other side. But he held impregnable ground when he dwelt on their direction, from front to back; on the fact that, unlike those that are self-inflicted, the ends of them were deep and sharp; and on other features concerning which it was minute and lucid, in which they—and the second one in particular—differed from anything which would have been the work of the dead man’s hand.

  When he was at last permitted to leave the box, there was probably no one in that crowded court who doubted that it was a savage murder which was in process of investigation.

  Those who watched with sufficient closeness, may have observed that counsel had avoided cross-examination on the question of whether the murder had been the work of a left-handed man.

  Mr. Huddleston sat down, looking content, but it was an expression without certain significance. It might mean no more than that he had had a fat fee to induce him to defend in a hopeless case, and that he was prolonging it in such ways as his brief required.

  Peter Entwistle had also listened to the evidence with an easy interest, as though it were of no personal importance, but that also was without significance to those who were murderers who have gone to sleep in the dock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “I call Francis Hammerton.”

  Francis, who had been waiting in the witnesses’ room, entered the court and the witness-box at the same time, not knowing what might have occurred already.

  He had not reflected that he might be called to answer to his own name, and when, in the next instant, he was asked his address, there was a second’s pause before he replied, “44 Addleston Terrace, S.W. 6,” giving that to which he had the best right, but from which he had so unavoidably absented himself during recent weeks.

  His mind, as he spoke, went rapidly over the consequences which the publication of his own name and address would have. How quickly would it bring his own relatives, to whom his disappearance must have been a strange, if not alarming event, round the doors of the court? He was glad to think that the address of the room he had now taken need not be mentioned. He would still have a retreat from surrounding voices, whether of friend or foe, of which none but Mr. Jellipot and the police would be aware.

  He was conscious in the same instant that Mr. Garrison, who had seen him in the dock a week before, on the charge now to be faced by another prisoner, but then with a different name, gave him a quick questioning glance, and that the eyes of Mr. Huddleston, whose position of defending counsel he did not yet know, rested upon him sharply for a moment, and fell again to his brief.

  Mr. Huddleston’s mind had, in fact, hesitated on the edge of suspicion, observing that second’s pause; but he reflected that many shy and respectable witnesses dislike giving their addresses in public, in such a case as that on which they were now engaged. Besides, had there been any real importance attaching to this question, the witness would surely have been coached already by the solicitors for the police. The very fact that the reply paused seemed to Mr. Huddleston’s mind conclusive that there was none. In fact, he defeated himself by his own subtlety, as those of acute mind are often likely to do.

  But the truth was that the prosecution had not gone over this witness’s evidence with him at all. Inspector Combridge had relied upon the accuracy of the statement which he had made when first questioned. A still-lingering doubt as to the extent of his past innocence or present veracity had resulted in a decision to leave him in the witness-box to his own defence, and he would have been more interested than pleased had he been able to read the instructions concerning himself which Mr. Dunkover’s brief contained. But if he could keep up his own end, he would find that the prosecution had no disposition to queer the pitch.

  “Occupation?”

  “Commercial artist.”

  “Mr. Hammerton, on the fourth inst. I understand that you were lodging at seventeen Vincent Street, the address where Mr. Rabone also had his rooms, and where he met with his death?”

  “Yes.”

  “He occupied a room on the attic floor, and you were sleeping in one on the floor below?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were roused by a cry in the night? Will you tell the court in your own words what occurred, as far as your knowledge goes?”

  “I was roused by a cry—a loud, horrible cry—which seemed to come from the floor above. I felt certain that something terrible had happened. I got out of bed, and switched on the light.

  “Then I half dressed, and went out on to the landing. There was no sound”—he hesitated for one observable second and went on, “after the cry, and so—”

  Mr. Dunkover interrupted him, seeing that counsel for the defence had observed that second’s hesitation, and thinking that the question which would almost certainly be asked would come best from himself.

  “Let us be clear on that. After the terrible cry you have mentioned, you heard no sound whatever until you went out on to the landing?”

  Faced with this direct question, Francis had the wisdom to answer frankly, “I meant nothing more of a frightening kind. I had thought that I heard steps overhead.”

  “In the room where the crime occurred?”

  “No. I couldn’t have heard them there. It was the other room that was over mine.”

  “Very well. You thought that you heard steps in the other room. You went out on to the landing. What did you do then?”

  “I listened, but heard nothing. The whole house seemed to be in absolute silence. I switched on the landing light, and went up the attic stairs. I felt I couldn’t go back to my own room without finding out what that cry had meant.”

  He paused a moment, and was aware that the court had become as silent as those midnight stairs. The simple brevity of his narrative had had an effect of realism, causing those who heard to share the feelings which were recalled to his own mind. At that moment, there may have been no one there, conscious of what had lain in the room above, who doubted the truth of the tale they heard.

  “You went up the stairs, and then—” Mr. Dunkover led him smoothly forward.

  “I looked first into the room on the left, because the door was open, and the light on. The room was empty. I noticed that the window was open, and there was a strong draught blowing through.”

  “I believe that that room was tenanted by a young lady whom you knew as
Miss Jones?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you say that she was not there. Had the bed been occupied? Did you notice that?”

  “Yes. I remember noticing that the clothes were half on the floor, as though they had been thrown hurriedly off.”

  Mr. Garrison interposed to ask: “You are calling Miss Jones, Mr. Dunkover?”

  Mr. Dunkover said that he was.

  “I only asked because I do not recall that you mentioned her in your opening statement.”

  “I mentioned her under the name of Weston, Jones being one that she had assumed under circumstances that she will explain.”

  “Very well. Pray proceed.”

  Mr. Dunkover returned his attention to the witness. “You noticed that the bed had been occupied, and appeared to have been hurriedly left. What did you do next?”

  “I crossed the landing to Mr. Rabone’s door. I knocked, but got no reply. After a few moments, when I found that I could not wake him, I tried the door, which was unlocked. I opened it, and went a step or two in.”

  “It was in darkness?”

  “Yes. There was a little light from the open door on the other side of the landing, but I couldn’t see anything distinctly till I found the switch, which I couldn’t feel at first.

  “I saw Mr. Rabone’s body lying on the floor before that, but I didn’t know what it was.”

  “And when you had switched on the light?”

  “I saw him lying on the floor, with his throat cut. There was an open razor lying near. I thought at first that he had killed himself, and then I remembered the cry I had heard, and thought that he had been murdered.... I think I was rather frightened for a moment. I remember looking round to see if whoever had done it was still there.

  “Then I thought that someone ought to be called. I went down to the basement, and knocked Mrs. Benson up.”

  “Mrs. Benson being your landlady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let us go back for a moment. Before you left Mr. Rabone’s room, did you notice anything more than you have said? Did you notice, for instance, whether the window of his room were open or shut?”