Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  And it probably would. All the same, it was curious that Nora Bates recalled everything else so clearly yet was adamant about not remembering that one small thing. Oddnesses were beginning to mount up.

  Alec asked her some general questions about the Walkers, whether she had ever heard them quarrelling, and if so what about. Her ignorance seemed to be genuine. She closed her ears and her mind to what she considered none of her business and had nothing useful to impart.

  Mrs. Davies had just, with pleasurable excitement, given her full name and address, when Tring, Piper, and the ambulance all arrived. Alec sent Tom to photograph the body and fingerprint the gas taps on the stove.

  “Piper, go with him and take samples of the liquids in the mugs and saucepan you’ll find in the sink. Is there something in the larder he can use, Mrs. Bates?”

  “Oh for a murder bag,” muttered Tom.

  “There’s clean jam jars. They’re to be returned, mind, properly cleaned and no lids missing. Waste not, want not.”

  “Quite right, ma’am,” Tom said, beaming at her. “I’ll check the mugs and pan for dabs, shall I, Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Yes. But do the photos first so we needn’t keep these gentlemen waiting.” He indicated the two stretcher-bearers lounging in the hall. “Take Constable Jenkins with you to fetch and carry.”

  The three departed. Alec turned back to Mrs. Davies.

  “Cor, I’d be ’appy to ’elp you, ducks,” she said regretfully, “but I bin rackin’ me brains and I don’t know nuffink I ain’t already tol’ you.”

  “We’ll just go over what you told me yesterday, for the record.”

  With Mackinnon taking verbatim notes, she repeated what she had said about the discord between the Walkers, oblivious of Mrs. Bates’s face growing sourer and sourer. Alec recalled his feeling that she had said something useful before, but this time nothing sparked that impression. Nor did his questions elicit anything.

  “All right, ladies, if you don’t mind waiting in the hall for a few minutes, the sergeant and I will go over this room. Then you can come back and clean and tidy to your hearts’ content.”

  The sitting room held no obvious clues: nothing but bottles and glasses in the drinks cabinet; no safe behind the Cubist painting on the wall; no incriminating letters between the pages of the carelessly tossed magazines; no half-burnt papers in the grate. They went out to the hall. Mrs. Davies was joking with the ambulance men while Mrs. Bates looked crabbier than ever, if possible.

  Alec asked the whereabouts of the major’s den.

  The small room was at the back of the house, the opposite side to the kitchen. Here the major’s passion for neatness held sway, along with his preference for tradition. No ultra-modern professional decorator had touched this cosy retreat with its deep armchairs and huge Victorian pedestal desk. The only picture was an equally huge and equally Victorian painting of the Battle of Waterloo. Wellington and Napoleon everlastingly faced each other on opposite hillsides above a scene of carnage.

  “Very military,” Mackinnon commented.

  “Very.” But Alec’s gaze was on the desk. On the meticulously aligned blotter lay a folded sheet of notepaper. Reaching for it, he let out a long sigh. So much for all his vague theories. “I think this is what we’re looking for,” he said.

  20

  Daisy saw Belinda off to catch the bus to school, then went to the kitchen. She was feeling guilty because calling the cook-housekeeper Mrs. was not sufficient recompense for loading her with a lot of extra work.

  “Is there anything I ought to be doing, Mrs. Dobson?” she asked. “I know you said you could cope without me, but Mrs. Fletcher told me such a long list of chores to be done while she’s away, I’m sure you can’t manage everything. And I did listen but I simply can’t remember the specifics.”

  “Bless you, madam, why should you? Me and Mrs. Twickle can do it all ‘cepting wash Mrs. Fletcher’s china knickety-knacks. I wouldn’t dare touch ’em for all the tea in China and today’s her reg’lar day for washing the dust off ’em.”

  “Oh, gosh, I wouldn’t dare either.” Daisy shuddered at the thought of chipping one of the hideous, delicate, and possibly valuable milkmaids or pug dogs. “They’ll just have to wait until she comes back. I’m sure it won’t be more than a day or two.”

  “The master’s hot on the trail of that murdering devil, is he, madam?”

  To judge by her language, the staid Mrs. Dobson must be a secret devotee of shilling shockers. Daisy was delighted with the discovery. “I expect he’ll clap the darbies on the villain any moment,” she said. “Well, if you truly don’t need me …”

  She went up to her writing room, sat down before her typewriter, and stared unseeing out of the window. Was Alec really about to “clap the darbies on the villain?” Did Major Walker’s suicide simplify or complicate the investigation? Had he left a note confessing to the murder of Raymond Talmadge?

  Alec probably knew the answers to all these questions by now. It was maddening not to be able to pop over to the Walkers’ house and find out what was going on. Much too restless to concentrate on her article, Daisy decided to take Nana for a walk up Primrose Hill to get rid of the fidgets.

  The puppy had no objection to this plan. It was a glorious day and for once the air was clear, so the view from the top almost came up to Wordsworth’s “Earth has not anything to show more fair.” The words did pass involuntarily through Daisy’s mind. However, the poet would definitely have castigated her as dull of soul, for she scarcely spared the “ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples” a second glance. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

  What if it wasn’t suicide? After all, Talmadge’s death would have passed as suicide or an accident if she hadn’t been there.

  What if some maniac was trotting around St. John’s Wood doing in middle-aged men so cleverly that until now no one had suspected murder? Not that Talmadge was really middle-aged, or one would have to count Alec in the same category, which he was not.

  What else did Walker and Talmadge have in common? Straying wives. If that was the maniac’s criterion, then Alec was safe.

  But really a murderous maniac was hardly a probable explanation. More to the point, one particular straying wife was connected with both victims: Gwen Walker. Suppose she had killed her lover when he told her their affair was over. Suppose the major then found out about the affair, or the murder, or both, and simply couldn’t live with the knowledge.

  Suicide seemed a cowardly way out for a military man, Daisy thought, and the gas oven a cowardly way to commit suicide. His continued use of his rank after the Armistice suggested he had been regular army. Surely the proper thing for an officer and a gentleman to do was to blow his brains out with a pistol!

  One way or another, Gwen Walker was mixed up in two unnatural deaths. Suddenly Daisy was dying to know what Melanie, after that tantalizing hint, had refused to tell her about the major’s wife.

  “Nana, come! Time to go home.”

  Nana gave her a considering look, decided she was serious, and stopped trying to climb a tree after a squirrel. They set off down the hill.

  When they reached home, Daisy went straight to the telephone.

  “Mrs. Germond’s just going out,” said the maid who answered.

  “Please see if you can catch her. It’s …” Urgent would be stretching the truth. Mel’s information probably had nothing to do with the major’s suicide, and even if it did, a few hours could hardly make any difference. On the other hand, Daisy had an urgent desire to know. She compromised. “It’s quite important.”

  “I’ll tell her, ma’am.”

  Melanie’s soft voice came on the line. “Daisy? What’s up? Belinda’s welcome to come here after school, if you’re going to be busy sleuthing?”

  “No, darling, but thanks for the offer. I wondered whether you could drop in for coffee this morning.”

  “I’d have loved to, but I don’t think I can make it. I have a million things to do toda
y.”

  “Tea this afternoon? Bring Lizzie, of course. Or drinks before dinner, you and Robert? Why don’t you both come to dinner! Though I can’t be sure Alec will be home.”

  Melanie laughed, but a note of caution entered her tone. “Tea, then. But I’m not promising to tell you … anything. I must run. ’Bye.”

  “Toodle-oo, darling, see you later.” About to hang up, Daisy paused, then depressed the hook to recall the operator. She asked for Sakari’s number. Melanie might hold out against one inquisitor, but she’d surely give in to the combined efforts of two.

  “‘I killed Talmadge, out of jealousy,’” Alec read aloud. “‘I know the police are closing in. They shall not take me alive.’ Signed, Francis Walker.”

  “So it really was suicide,” sighed Ernie Piper.

  His evident disappointment made Tom’s moustache twitch with amusement. “Ah,” said the sergeant ruminatively. He leant back, his massive form for once comfortably encompassed by one of the big armchairs in the major’s den. “So it would appear. Handwriting’s his, Chief?”

  Alec passed him the sheet of paper, and Mackinnon handed over several other examples of the signature and writing—cancelled cheques and copies of correspondence—which they had found in the desk. Tom compared them carefully, with Piper hanging over his shoulder.

  “They look the same to me,” the young DC admitted regretfully.

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t think so, Tom?”

  “I do, Chief, I do.”

  “Then the Talmadge case is solved,” said Mackinnon. He too was disappointed. His chance to work with the Yard had not lasted long, and the suicide of the villain brought no one any glory.

  “Ah!”

  “I take it you’ve spotted the flaw in that argument, Tom?”

  “Seems to me, Chief, we’d be foolish to take his word just because he’s dead. Maybe he loved his wife so much he murdered her lover, like he says. Or maybe he loved her so much, he confessed and killed himself to save her when he discovered she’d murdered her lover.”

  “Or maybe he convinced himself quite mistakenly that she did it. I’m afraid we still can’t write off Mrs. Talmadge or Lord Creighton, much as I’d like to.” If he’d been alone with Tom, Alec might have added that he couldn’t be sure, either, that Daisy wouldn’t dig up some new suspect from under a stone.

  “At least we know it’s suicide, Chief,” said Piper, “since you found this letter in his writing.”

  “It’s not suicide, laddie,” Tom reproved him, “till the Coroner says it’s suicide. We have to go through the motions like it could be homicide. The major’s dabs are on the oven knob, though, Chief. ‘Course, if he was knocked out first, like he must’ve been, she could’ve lifted his hand up to make ’em, but d’you reckon she’d think of it? And have the nerve?”

  “All the villains know about fingerprints now,” Mackinnon pointed out, “which isna to say they never leave ’em.”

  “Mrs. Walker isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill villain,” said Alec, “but she told me she reads detective stories. Not that she’s a villain at all, probably. Are his the only prints, Tom?”

  “No, there’s a set looks like a woman’s. Probably the housekeeper’s when she turned the gas off. I’d better get hers and the char’s.”

  “That’ll give ‘em a thrill,” said Piper. “D’you want to bother with these samples I got, Chief?”

  “Yes. As Tom says, we have to go through the motions. Besides, it’s odd that there are two mugs when Mrs. Bates says only the major ever drank Ovaltine at bedtime.” His suspicions aroused again, Alec compared the suicide note with the other papers. He’d be prepared to swear the signature was Walker’s, but the lot had better go to a handwriting expert. Surely, though, it would take plenty of practice to forge a signature so neatly. Could some unknown third person be involved?

  “Ernie, I want you to go through this desk and any papers we find elsewhere really thoroughly. Look in particular for evidence of relatives, and see if you can find a will or at least the name of his solicitors. Tom, get the women’s fingerprints, and see if you can persuade Mrs. Bates to go through her story again. The important points are whether she did in fact turn off the gas taps, and can she be quite sure the back door was bolted inside when she opened it.”

  “And the front door, Chief?”

  “Yes, check the front door, too. I didn’t look at the lock and she didn’t mention a bolt or night latch. The major could have let someone in who let himself out. Also ask what she knows of relatives. Mackinnon, you and I will continue the search.”

  Of course, what he really wanted was to put a few probing questions to Mrs. Walker, but he wasn’t quite ready to wake her from her drugged sleep. Nor did he care to search her bedroom while she slept. He stationed PC Jenkins at the door, with instructions to keep his ears open.

  “Come and tell me at once if you hear any sounds from within.”

  The summons was a long time coming. They had time to search the entire house and gather in the den to discuss their gleanings.

  Alec had found, in Mrs. Walker’s untidy boudoir to one side of the bedroom, a small writing desk, not locked. In it, amidst a jumble of bills, paid and unpaid, and dunning letters, was a letter from a cousin in Northamptonshire. The tone of the letter suggested an infrequent correspondence and a distance of sympathies as well as of miles. There was a letter from her mother in Ireland, rambling about farm matters. The only other personal paper was a brief note from Jennifer Crouch, expressing her delight that dear Gwen would come to tea on Wednesday. It was dated several weeks ago.

  No letters from Raymond Talmadge. If Gwen Walker had received any, she must have destroyed them, or hidden them rather more cleverly than one might expect of such an untidy person.

  Ernie Piper had had still less luck on the personal side. All the meticulously filed letters in the major’s neat desk were concerned with business, including his copies of those he had written himself. His address book contained only obviously business entries except for local people whose names Alec recognized. The latter were those with whom the Walkers exchanged hospitality, mostly bridge players.

  His bank book, Piper reported, showed a healthy balance. His income appeared to be sufficient for comfort if not for wild extravagance. Everything went to his wife on his death.

  Mackinnon had gone over Walker’s dressing room, on the other side of the bedroom from his wife’s boudoir. He had found nothing of interest. However, he was left with a puzzled feeling that something was missing which ought to be there. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “Tom, you take a look and see if you can pin it down,” Alec said. “But first, any luck with Mrs. Bates?”

  “She’s sure the back door was bolted, Chief, and the catch was down on the front-door lock, so that it couldn’t be opened from outside even with a key. Nor no one leaving that way couldn’t have set the catch behind ’em. There’s no sign of breaking and entering anywhere, either. I checked.”

  “What about the gas taps?”

  “She absolutely can’t remember turning them off. I’d say that don’t mean much, but—”

  “Sir!” Constable Jenkins burst into the den. “Mrs. Walker’s awake. I didn’t hear nothing in the room but the housekeeper came up and said she’d rung.”

  “Damn!” Alec exclaimed. “Did Mrs. Bates go in?”

  “Yes, sir. You didn’t say to stop her,” Jenkins said reproachfully.

  “Losh, man, you’re supposed to use your noddle!” cried Mackinnon, exasperated.

  “No use crying over spilt milk,” said Alec, making for the door, “and she may not have told her her husband’s dead. She’s not the most forthcoming of women.”

  He wanted to be there when Gwen Walker was told she was a widow, in hopes of discerning whether the news came as a surprise to her—or not.

  He met Mrs. Bates on the stairs. “Did you tell Mrs. Walker about her husband?”

&n
bsp; “Of course. And that you police want to talk to her.” Of course. Why should an unsentimental woman who rather disliked her mistress hesitate to give her bad news?

  “How did she take it?”

  Mrs. Bates shrugged. “How would you expect her to take it? She said to tell you she’ll be down in half an hour.”

  Alec gave up.

  Half an hour later, when Gwen Walker came down, he was ready for her. Mackinnon had orders to search the bedroom as soon as she left it. Ernie Piper sat in an inconspicuous corner of the sitting room, ready with his notebook and his usual selection of ever-sharp pencils. Tom Tring stood by with his fingerprint kit.

  Alec rose as Mrs. Walker came in. Her face was solemn, but not sorrowful. If tears had been shed, immaculate make-up hid the signs. She wore a navy costume with a white silk blouse and a single strand of pearls. Whatever her carelessness about her surroundings, Gwen Walker’s person was as always beyond criticism.

  She paused in the doorway and Alec moved to meet her. “Allow me to express my condolences,” he said, the formal phrase once more proving its usefulness.

  Her lower lip quivered, almost imperceptibly, but she spoke with outward composure. “Thank you, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “I’m very sorry to trouble you at this time, but there are questions that must be asked. In view of our prior acquaintance, it’s perfectly understandable if you prefer to speak to another officer. Also, you’re entitled to have your solicitor with you, if you feel the need.”

  “No need, and I’d rather answer your questions than a stranger’s,” she said with a faint smile.

  Alec bowed slightly and gestured towards a chair which would place her with the light from the window on her face, her back towards Piper. “I’m afraid I’ll have to have Detective Sergeant Tring take your fingerprints, for elimination purposes.”

  Dismay was followed by resignation as Tom stepped forward. “All right.”

  “It will only take a moment, ma’am,” Tom rumbled comfortably, “and I have a cloth here to wipe your fingers afterwards.”