Murder Underground

by Mavis Doriel Hay

  Inspector Caird came forward. “Mr. Basil Pongleton, I think I must ask you to come to the station for a talk, to clear up one or two matters. And perhaps Miss Watson can give us some information?”

  Beryl, followed by Uncle James and Mr. Stoggins, came out of the drawing-room. There were tears in her eyes and she blinked desperately, hoping to hide them.

  “I think I had better take my uncle home,” she said uncertainly, and with a question in her voice, to Inspector Caird. He nodded and they went out. James Pongleton looked dazed. The full significance of that sentence about the pearls in Phemia’s will was dawning upon him, but he could not reason it out. He wanted to get away from this strange house. He felt old and helpless.

  Inspector Caird signed to Basil and Betty to enter the drawing-room; he followed them and shut the door carefully. They sat side by side on the sofa and he faced them from the chair which had just disclosed its secrets. Betty sat upright and looked determined.

  “As you know, Miss Watson, I overheard what you said outside this door just now. ‘It must have been put there later.’ I think you may like to explain that. You probably realize that we are hampered in our enquiries by lack of information which someone is withholding. Do you wish to tell me anything more?”

  Betty had recovered her composure. She wrinkled her brows at him innocently. “I didn’t mean anything in particular—only that Miss Pongleton must have put the pearls down the side of the chair after Basil gave them back to her at tea-time on Wednesday, and then she must have put the will there later, after Nellie and Bob had witnessed it. We’ve all heard about that. It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?”

  “I see,” said Inspector Caird, nodding slowly. “And you knew that Mr. Pongleton had them in his possession and—hm!—returned them to his aunt! I may have to ask you to make a statement later, so may I know if I shall find you here in, say, an hour or so?”

  “Certainly. I’m not going out to-night. Is there anything more I can tell you now?”

  “That is for you to say.”

  The door opened gently and Mr. Slocomb entered, for it was now half-past six, his usual time of arrival at the Frampton.

  “Inspector Caird! This is very fortunate!” he exclaimed cordially. “I was considering the best means of communicating with you. A further scrap of information which may be of use, though I do not know if it has any bearing on the matter. Can you spare me a moment? Nothing confidential, you know,” he added, with a glance at Betty and Basil.

  Inspector Caird seemed to sigh, but he rose and walked over to Mr. Blend’s table in the corner. Mr. Slocomb followed him.

  “You may remember that during our conversation on Friday night I told you of my belief that the dog-leash with which Miss Pongleton was—er—strangled was not in its accustomed place in the lounge hall on Thursday night, after young Thurlow had been here?”

  The inspector nodded.

  “I am now certain that it was not there. A little incident has come to my mind which fixes the matter beyond doubt, and I thought it right to inform you of this. On Thursday evening I had occasion to write a letter of some importance—on a business matter to a friend—and for this purpose I went into the smoking-room… .”

  The inspector nodded again, with a trace of impatience.

  “On leaving that room at about ten o’clock, the question came into my mind whether Miss Pongleton’s little dog had been taken for a run that evening. Miss Pongleton herself was reluctant to venture out in the night air in the winter and it was customary among us here—we are a friendly family party, Inspector—for one or other of us to take the dog for his constitutional, as is advisable before he settles for the night. I therefore looked on the umbrella stand, as I passed through the hall, for his leash. The absence or presence of the leash would normally give a clue to the animal’s whereabouts.”

  Mr. Slocomb looked enquiringly at the inspector to make sure that he understood the situation.

  “And you saw…?” the inspector asked, in a tone that indicated that his interest was aroused.

  “The leash was not there.”

  “And did you make any enquiry, Mr. Slocomb, as to whether anyone else actually had taken the dog and the leash?”

  “I made no enquiry. I assumed that the dog had been taken out on the leash, and I proceeded upstairs to bed.”

  Mr. Slocomb knew that the inspector had asked everyone in the Frampton about their movements on that evening and whether any of them had seen or touched the leash, and it was a matter of common knowledge that no one had taken the dog out that evening, because it was very wet. Tuppy had been forced to content himself with exercise in the back garden.

  “You did not go out to post your letter?” asked Inspector Caird.

  “No. Although important, it was not urgent and I reserved it for posting in the course of my constitutional next morning.”

  “You are doubtless aware, Mr. Slocomb, that the girl Nellie Foster states positively that the leash was on the umbrella stand when she herself went to bed that night, which would be soon after ten?”

  “I have heard that, Inspector,” Mr. Slocomb admitted pleasantly. “Her statement may, of course, be actuated by certain motives.…”

  “Yes, Mr. Slocomb, I think you can trust us to estimate the value of each witness,” put in the inspector curtly.

  “Quite, quite,” Mr. Slocomb assured him.

  “And on Friday you were not sure whether you had seen the leash?”

  “I think we were all somewhat—er—distraught on that evening when you took our statements, Inspector,” suggested Mr. Slocomb blandly. “Certainly this little incident entirely slipped my memory, which is generally—I may—er—flatter myself—a singularly retentive one. It was recalled to me when I received to-day a reply to my letter written on Thursday night—which reply, incidentally, confirms my memory, as my friend mentions the date of my letter. You will understand, accustomed as you are to following trains of thought, how it struck me that it was on the night preceding the murder that I had written to my friend. I recalled how undisturbed our life then was; I remembered how I left the smoking-room with my letter in my hand and, with what I may call—er—dramatic effect, I recollected how I had thought of Miss Pongleton’s little dog and had looked for his leash.”

  Whilst this conversation was going on, Betty and Basil sat side by side on the sofa, fearful of voicing the questions each was longing to ask the other lest they should say anything to rouse the inspector’s attention. Betty realized that Basil was somehow in a worse mess than ever, and that her “explanation” of her remark to Basil in the hall had not gone down very well. She summoned courage to murmur in an almost inaudible whisper: “You must tell the truth—all of it.” Basil did not commit himself, even by so much as a nod. They sat there in silence, holding one another’s hands, until Inspector Caird was ready to go with Basil to the police-station.

  Chapter XVIII

  Clues in Coventry

  Mrs. Daymer, awaiting Gerry on the platform at Coventry at 1.7 on that wet Monday, looked very long and unkempt in the shaggy brown coat which hung baggily to her ankles, and a shaggy brown cap rammed over her sandy hair. She peered through her pince-nez at the disembarking travellers and hailed Gerry excitedly by waving her leather satchel.

  “I’m really very glad you’ve come,” she declared, as they steered a wavering course out of the station. “I was almost afraid you might be kept at the inquest—imagination, you know.…But how did it go?”

  “Much as we thought it would,” panted Gerry. Mrs. Daymer pushed her way through the crowd with a stern disregard of the other passengers, who gave way to her timidly but with black looks. Gerry’s progress was punctuated by dodges and apologetic hat-raising. “I say,” he gasped, “what about a taxi and a spot of lunch? Must be a decent hotel here.…”

  “I noticed quite a reasonable-looking tea-shop,” b
egan Mrs. Daymer reprovingly.

  Gerry rushed desperately at a waiting taxi, threw open the door, hustled Mrs. Daymer in and told the driver urgently, “A good hotel,” before he followed her.

  “But really, quite unnecessary expense,” Mrs. Daymer was murmuring in protest. “A brisk walk through the rain would have refreshed your mind as well as your body.”

  “This is on me, please,” said Gerry firmly.

  “Certainly not!” declared Mrs. Daymer. “I most strongly deprecate the convention that a man must always treat a woman—”

  “But you see I have a weak chest,” Gerry improvised hastily. “And my digestion’s not very good either; can’t stand these cheap cafés. And you must be pretty wet already?”

  “I don’t mind it,” Mrs. Daymer assured him airily. “My clothing is pure wool, handspun and handwoven—sheer craftsmanship without any damaging mechanical processes. The material retains the natural grease of the sheep, which is, of course, impervious to rain. As for my face, I use no cosmetics, as you see.…”

  Gerry sniffed surreptitiously. He had wondered why the air of Coventry was permeated with a farmyard smell; now he suspected that it was the natural grease of the sheep.

  During lunch Gerry satisfied Mrs. Daymer’s curiosity about the inquest. There had been the usual evidence of identity and concerning the discovery of the body. The medical evidence was to the effect that Miss Pongleton had been strangled, presumably by someone standing behind and above her on the stairs, who had whipped the leash with remarkable proficiency round the old lady’s neck and pulled it tight, whilst she fell forward down the stairs so that the weight of her body helped the assassin. Basil had not been put in the witness-box and Gerry himself had only been asked to give brief particulars about how he passed the old lady on the stairs.

  “They don’t seem to be worrying about me at all,” Gerry assured Mrs. Daymer, in blissful ignorance to the hue-and-cry that his disappearance had caused. “There was one old lady on the jury who gave me a nasty look, but the police didn’t seem interested in me. Though, by the way, one queer thing has happened. The police called at my rooms on Saturday and asked to see my shoes, but after one look at them they showed no further interest. Surely there can’t be any footprints?”

  “Blood?” mused Mrs. Daymer ghoulishly. “Hardly. Mm! I regret having to miss the inquest.”

  “It was perfectly beastly! Beryl was pretty badly upset and I was quite glad of an excuse to whisk her away.”

  He thought sadly and anxiously of Beryl and felt no enthusiasm at all for this fantastic expedition with a strongminded woman in peculiar clothes. In fact, he neglected to ask Mrs. Daymer how her own enquiries had progressed, but when she had extracted from him all the details he could give about the inquest, she volunteered an account of her doings. She had found that the landlady, Mrs. Copping, was dead, but she had traced a former neighbour who had given the address of the landlady’s daughter.

  She flicked over the pages of a reporter’s notebook. “Here it is: Mrs. Maud Birtle, Godiva Villas, Number eight, or it may be eighteen, but anyone in the street will know.”

  “Godiva Villas!” Gerry snorted with laughter. “Sure they weren’t having you on, Mrs. Daymer?”

  “After all, we are in Coventry,” she told him severely. “I have great hopes of Mrs. Maud Birtle. The street where they used to live was much as I expected—monotonous, flat, mean; the kind of place in which the germs of crime sprout unchecked.” Mrs. Daymer almost licked her lips in appreciation.

  “Well, I suppose we trot off now to see Mrs. Maud?” Gerry suggested hastily.

  They set forth through pelting rain, Mrs. Daymer having shot off ahead before Gerry had time to tell the porter to call a taxi.

  “I almost think I ought to try my hand at a crime novel after this,” Mrs. Daymer mused coyly. “Treating it in a psychological way, of course—not merely superficially, as most crime novelists do.”

  Gerry had felt more cheerful after lunch, but now the cold rain leaking down the back of his collar depressed him again. Mrs. Daymer strode on, serene under the protective natural grease of the sheep.

  “About the third turning on the left,” she said slowly, trying to remember some directions. “Johnson Street—or was it Thompson Street?” She stood precariously on one leg and the tip of one toe in the middle of the crowded pavement, where people came charging blindly along under umbrellas, and balanced her satchel on her knee whilst she extracted the notebook. “Yes, Johnson Street, and then Fairview Terrace on the right, and then Godiva Villas on the left.”

  “Let me take that!” Gerry held out a hand for the notebook, anxious to put an end to Mrs. Daymer’s balancing tricks before she should upset the contents of the satchel all over the wet pavement so that he would have to scramble after papers, powder-boxes—no! she used no cosmetics, fortunately, or was it unfortunately?—her nightdress, perhaps, and goodness knows what else among the slimy mud and the legs of passers-by.

  To his relief she handed over the notebook to his care.

  “What do we say to Mrs. Maud when we get there? I mean, to explain ourselves?” Gerry asked.

  “It depends upon her type; but I am used to dealing with people,” Mrs. Daymer assured him complacently.

  “She must have dealt pretty thoroughly with old Daymer,” Gerry reflected.

  Godiva Villas were on the outskirts of the town, a row of Victorian houses of liverish brick topped by cold blue slates. The vagueness of the address—Number 8, or it might be 18; or perhaps 78 or 108, thought Gerry—increased his hatred of the interminable succession of silly little gables that ran down either side of the street, diminishing and huddling together more closely, away into a wet blur at the end. Once more he cursed the idiocy which had led him to come to Coventry with Mrs. Daymer. He had felt that it was going to be rather a lark; now he only felt a fool.

  The bay-window of Number 8, Godiva Villas, displayed a large dirty card, propped up between the glass and the coarse lace curtains, which announced baldly: “Apartments”.

  “Probably the right number,” Mrs. Daymer announced cheerfully. “I was told that Mrs. Birtle takes gentlemen in and does for them.”

  The door was opened by a small woman of about fifty, with little flickering eyes, a nose jutting out at a sharp angle and beneath it a long upper lip which was turned tightly in to her wide mouth. She had a lizard-like look. This was Mrs. Maud Birtle herself. Mrs. Daymer presented her card, which Mrs. Birtle read carefully and then turned over, as if she expected to find something really interesting on the back. Disappointed by its blankness, she handed it back and her eyes flicked from Mrs. Daymer to Gerry and back again enquiringly.

  “I believe you can help me very much, Mrs. Birtle,” Mrs. Daymer began, “if you will tell me something about an incident which happened in Coventry rather a long time ago, of which you possibly have knowledge. It was Miss Triggs sent me to you; I understand that she was a friend of your mother’s when she was alive?”

  “Friend!” snorted Mrs. Birtle. “That’s as may be. Neighbour she was to us, and my poor mother always liked to be on good terms with her neighbours.”

  “I don’t know Miss Triggs very well,” Mrs. Daymer hastened to explain. “I only came across her in the course of my enquiries as to the whereabouts of any member of your family. I am a writer and at the moment I am studying curious examples of cruelty and perversion—the psychological aspect, of course. I have come across a remarkable instance: the case of a young man who strangled a dog. From the contemporary newspaper accounts I learn that he was lodging with your mother at the time, and I am in hope that you may be able to clear up some points connected with the case. Of course your name would not appear in anything I may write about the matter—unless you wish it.”

  Mrs. Birtle was obviously flummoxed by this flood of explanation, but the concluding words had been quite clear and she replied to t
hem, ignoring the rest.

  “That I don’t indeed,” she declared emphatically.

  “Then you’ll tell me something about the dog-strangling episode?” Mrs. Daymer asked.

  Mrs. Birtle considered. “Yes,” she said, after a tense silence. “I remember the affair, though it’s many years ago, and a nasty affair it was too. Won’t you come in and sit down?”

  “This is very kind of you,” Mrs. Daymer enthused. “I was sure you would help us.”

  Mrs. Birtle led them through her narrow hall into the front room. From the odour that hung about the hall Gerry surmised that she “did for” her gentlemen with kippers and onions. Mrs. Daymer seated herself on the end of a hard couch upholstered in green plush, and Gerry lowered himself gingerly into an armchair decorated with white lace bib and cuffs.

  “I’m not quite sure what it was you wanted to know,” Mrs. Birtle began. “Something to do with the Cruelty to Animals, are you, perhaps?”

  “I won’t deny that they may be interested in my enquiry,” Mrs. Daymer prevaricated.

  “They went into the case at the time, but they said if I remember rightly, that there wasn’t not to say cruelty. What I mean is, if you had a right to dispose of a dog, that way wasn’t so much worse than another.”

  “Quite so,” Mrs. Daymer assented. “Your mother brought the case against him, I believe, for killing a valuable dog?”

  “That was the way of it, and he had to pay for the dog, but of course nothing made up to Mother for poor Dido. Funny thing that you should come here to-day asking me about it, for I well remember the day when the case was on; the rain was torrentential! Just such a day as this! How it all comes back! I was quite a young girl at the time,” Mrs. Birtle added, flicking a coy glance at Gerry.

  “Can you remember anything about the young man who strangled poor Dido?” asked Mrs. Daymer sympathetically.

  “I remember him well enough,” Mrs. Birtle declared, smoothing her black hair towards its knob at the back of her head. “You see, he was a smart enough young man, and I, being young and romantical, thought a lot of him—until that affair with Dido. That gave me a nasty shock, to think that such a pleasant-spoken, quiet young man could act so brutal.”