Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  Craythorn was obviously taken aback.

  “No, sir,” he admitted. “A box of matches and a cigarette-case was what we found.”

  “Don’t look so depressed,” Sir Clinton advised. “We’ll have to find out when this hearth was cleaned up and the fender dusted, before we can lay any stress on this ash. In the meanwhile, you might see if you can collect it. There’s some unburnt tobacco amongst it and we might be able to get the brand identified by an expert if necessary.”

  Craythorn took a small envelope and a camel’s-hair brush from his pocket, knelt down, and meticulously gathered up the mixture of ash and tobacco-leaf. Then, sealing the envelope, he wrote a few words on it and transferred it to his pocket. Meanwhile Sir Clinton had been examining his surroundings.

  “Everything looks very spick-and-span,” he commented. “Except one thing. Those flowers in that silver rose-bowl are withered, while the ones in the vases about the room seem quite fresh.”

  He went over to a small occasional table which stood in the centre of the room and dipped his hand down among the flowers which it held. As he did so, his eyebrows lifted as though in surprise. Craythorn, having finished his task, followed the Chief Constable’s example and found the bowl dry of water.

  “They must have forgotten to fill it up,” he suggested.

  But his remark went unheeded. Sir Clinton had gone down on hands and knees and was exploring the surface of the carpet with his open palm. For some minutes he searched vainly over the surface but at last he stood up again and drew Craythorn’s attention to one spot on the carpet.

  “Just put your hand over that bit near the corner, Inspector, please.”

  Craythorn obeyed and at once looked up.

  “It’s damp, sir, if that’s what you mean. It doesn’t show up on the dark carpet, but I can feel it all right.”

  “It’s at least twelve hours since that was spilt,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “If it had been merely a drop or two, it would have dried up in that time. So it must have been a fair quantity. Couple that with the waterless rose-bowl with the withered flowers, Inspector, and see what you make of it.”

  He pursued his examination of the room, but so far as Craythorn could see, nothing else of importance presented itself.

  “Now, I think we might have a talk with that maid. What’s her name? Cissie Worgate. Very good. Let’s have her in, Inspector.”

  Cissie, though she had been expecting the summons, was visibly nervous as she entered the room. It was one thing to talk to the affable inspector but quite another to stand up and be questioned by the Chief Constable, who might — for all she knew — put one under lock and key without so much as “by your leave.” Cissie’s ideas about the police hierarchy were vague and her views on a Chief Constable’s powers extensive. She was trembling a little as she made her entry.

  “There’s no need to be flurried,” Sir Clinton assured her kindly. “I’m only going to ask you a question or two about the routine of the house. You’ll be able to answer them without even having to think. Now, first of all, you see that clock’s stopped. Can you remember when you saw it going, last?”

  Cissie was much relieved by the question. She had feared she was to be examined about the discovery of Hyson’s body, and as that had formed the subject of recurrent nightmares during her fitful dozing during the night, she wanted to think as little about it as possible. Still, this first interpellation was so unexpected that it took her momentarily aback.

  “The clock, sir?” she echoed.

  “The clock,” Sir Clinton repeated. “Can you remember when you saw it going?”

  Cissie cast her mind back and captured a memory she could rely on.

  “It was going, sir, just before I went out, yesterday afternoon. I looked in here to see the time after I’d set the supper-table, before I went upstairs to dress to go out. I wanted to see how much time I had in hand because I was going to the cinema, sir, and I wanted to get there in time for the start of a long picture. That’s how I remember it, sir. It was at twenty to three, and I remember noticing the clock was going. Besides, the time I got from it was quite right. I got to the picture house just when the long picture was starting, so the clock must have been at the right time.”

  Sir Clinton gave an encouraging nod.

  “Now that’s just what I wanted from you. If all witnesses were as sound as this, we’d have an easier time.”

  At the word of praise, Cissie lost her nervousness, which was what the Chief Constable aimed at.

  “Now another point,” he continued. “It’s mild weather and this fire hasn’t been lighted. But I suppose you dust and sweep the room regularly and go over the hearth even if there are no ashes to clear up?”

  “Yes, sir, every day.”

  “Sure?”

  “Quite sure, sir,” Cissie declared firmly. “Some maids scamp their work, sir, but I don’t. I like work.”

  “Then you swept this hearth yesterday? In the morning?”

  “Yes, sir, in the morning. It was quite clean, sir, though. I just gave it a dusting.”

  “And you found nothing but dust, nothing in the way of bits of torn paper or cigarette ends?”

  Cissie considered for a moment or two, then shook her head.

  “No, sir,” she said positively, “nothing but dust that you’d brush away with a duster.”

  “Do you vacuum-clean the carpet by any chance?”

  “I didn’t yesterday, sir. I just went round with a duster.”

  “Very good. Now who looks after the flowers in these vases?”

  “I don’t do that, sir. Mrs. Hyson always arranges the flowers all over the house. I know she put fresh ones in yesterday morning, for she took all the vases and bowls away while I was doing this room.”

  Sir Clinton let her see that he was quite satisfied with her replies. Then he passed to another topic.

  “When do the posts come to the house?”

  “There’s one before breakfast, sir. And one comes round about half-past twelve. Then there’s another one at four o’clock. And the last one comes some time after six — about a quarter past, usually.”

  “When you went out, yesterday afternoon, there was no letter in the letter-box, was there? You’d have seen it if it had been there?”

  “No, sir, there wasn’t any. I’d taken the midday letters out of the box when they came and put them on the hall table. The four-o’clock post hadn’t come in when I left the house, sir.”

  “Now we’re nearly finished,” Sir Clinton said, to Cissie’s relief. “Just a couple of questions more. Mr. Hyson smoked, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir. He smoked quite a lot.”

  “A pipe?”

  “No, sir. I never saw him with a pipe. Cigarettes were what he smoked always.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “Dead sure, sir.”

  Sir Clinton smiled at the positive way in which she gave her reply.

  “Well, I think that’s all we need trouble you about,” he said after a moment or two’s thought.

  Cissie retired, flushed but more at ease in her mind, now that this ordeal was over. Sir Clinton turned to the inspector.

  “Before I forget,” he directed, “ring up the police surgeon and ask him to look carefully for a bruise at the back of Hyson’s head. He’ll probably have to shave off the hair to find it. Also ask him to note carefully if the skull’s fractured, though I don’t think it’s likely.”

  Craythorn’s eyebrows betrayed his surprise at this order.

  “You don’t think it was suicide, then, sir?”

  “I don’t know what it was. But I want to find out,” Sir Clinton retorted. “Don’t phone from here, though. You might be overheard. Wait till you get to that telephone kiosk down the Avenue.”

  The inspector evidently found some food for thought in the order. All his earlier suspicions came flooding back again. A knock on the head? Whom did that bring in? Barsett, perhaps? But why drag in Barsett? A woman
could knock a man on the head easily enough, if she went about it the right way. And Hyson and his wife had been in the house alone together up to seven o’clock at any rate, as the supper-table showed. What was more, in a case of this sort you couldn’t be sure of the precise hour of death. The police surgeon was too careful a man to go giving definite estimates. And there was plenty of motive in the background. And there was that sister to give an alibi to Mrs. Hyson if the times did get a bit awkward. Well, a good deal would turn on that bruise if the doctor could find it, evidently.

  “Now I think we’d better see Mrs. Hyson,” Sir Clinton suggested. “We can speak to her sister afterwards. One at a time.”

  “They’ll have their story all ready,” said the inspector, full of his resuscitated suspicions. “They’ll have gone over it together while they were waiting here this morning, not to speak of the time they were together last night.”

  “Are you thinking of handcuffs already?” inquired Sir Clinton sardonically. “I’d wait a while yet. There’s no evidence to prove anything, so far.”

  When Linda Hyson was called into the room Sir Clinton, knowing the relations between her and her husband, did not embarrass her by too much sympathy with her loss. After a tactful remark or two he put the interview on a footing of pure officialism.

  “You gave Inspector Craythorn an account of what happened last night, Mrs. Hyson,” he recalled. “I needn’t trouble you to go over that again, except for one or two points. But some other things have turned up, and I’d like to be certain about them.”

  “Ask anything you please,” Linda invited him.

  Obviously she had spent a sleepless night. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her whole bearing gave the impression that she was thoroughly tired and rather anxious.

  “Thank you,” said Sir Clinton. “Now first of all, can you give me any idea when that clock on the mantelpiece stopped?”

  Linda glanced at it.

  “But it’s going,” she pointed out. “It’s all wrong, though,” she added after mechanically glancing at her wrist-watch. “That’s funny. Usually it keeps time almost to a second.”

  “It stopped last night,” Sir Clinton explained. “I restarted it this morning to make sure it was in working order. Now, can you remember when you saw it going, yesterday?”

  Linda seemed rather puzzled at the whole incident. Evidently the stopping of the clock struck her as strange, and the importance Sir Clinton attached to the stoppage perplexed her. She thought for some seconds before answering.

  “The last time I remember looking at it was just before supper last night. I looked then to see if it was supper-time. That was just before seven o’clock. It was going then, so far as I can remember. It certainly was at the right time.”

  Sir Clinton made a gesture to show that he was quite satisfied with her reply.

  “You had no trouble with a fuse that evening?”

  Linda shook her head.

  “Not while I was in the house,” she declared. “Of course, I went out about eight o’clock. A fuse may have gone after that. I can’t say anything about that.”

  “Naturally. But to your own knowledge there was no fuse trouble and the main switch wasn’t taken out while you were in the house?”

  “No, certainly not,” Linda answered frankly. “If you hadn’t told me that the clock had stopped, I’d have known nothing about it till I came to look at the time.”

  “That’s what I expected,” Sir Clinton confessed. “Now, another matter. I believe you look after the flowers in the house? Your maid doesn’t fill the vases?”

  “Oh, no. I prefer to arrange flowers myself. Then I can get them just as I want them.”

  “When did you put these present ones in?”

  “Yesterday morning, probably about eleven o’clock or thereabouts.”

  “And you put fresh water into all the vases and so forth? Into this one?” he queried, pointing to the rose-bowl.

  Craythorn saw the trap that was laid, but he saw too that it failed to catch anything. Linda Hyson showed not the slightest sign of interest in the rose-bowl.

  “Yes, I put fresh water into all of them then. And fresh flowers.”

  Sir Clinton nodded again, as though he had expected this.

  “Now another point, Mrs. Hyson. The maid tells us that Mr. Hyson smoked cigarettes. Did he ever smoke a pipe?”

  Linda seemed somewhat surprised by this question.

  “No,” she declared. Then, correcting herself, she added, “Some years ago he tried to take up pipe-smoking, but it didn’t suit him and he dropped it almost at once. For three or four years now he smoked nothing but cigarettes. I don’t know if he even had a pipe in his possession.”

  “You were alone in the house between the time your maid went out yesterday afternoon and the time Mr. Hyson came back from the office? Had you any visitor during that interval?”

  “No, nobody,” she declared definitely. “Unless you mean the tradespeople, of course. The milkman left a bottle of milk on the scullery window-sill, as he usually does. I can’t remember any others.”

  “Not even the postman?”

  Linda pondered for a moment or two and then shook her head.

  “No, no letters came either at four o’clock or by the six-o’clock post. I’d have noticed them in the letter-box if they had come. The milkman is the only caller I can remember, and he didn’t even ring the bell.”

  “That’s quite clear,” Sir Clinton said. “Now let’s turn to your phone. You rang up Mr. Barsett at half-past two. Then shortly after eight o’clock you were rung up by someone who appears to have been hoaxing you. The point is, your phone was in working order at eight. About an hour later, you rang up this house and could get no answer. . . .”

  “I’ve found out why that was,” Linda interrupted. “When the repairer came this morning, he found the wires of our phone cut. So of course it was impossible to get a connection. The cut was intentional, he told me, not a thing that might have happened by accident. Your men found the phone out of order when they arrived, I’m told.”

  “I hadn’t heard of this before,” Sir Clinton explained. “So on that basis someone must have cut the wires sometime between eight and nine o’clock. You’ve no idea who could have played that trick, I suppose?”

  Again Craythorn’s suspicions blazed up. She might have cut the wires herself when she went out to go across to her sister’s flat. But why? To prevent anyone ringing up Hyson? Possibly, but again why? That seemed a blank end, so far as his present knowledge went.

  “I’ve no idea at all about the telephone affair,” Linda replied. “I can’t think of anyone who would play a practical joke of that sort. And I can’t imagine what led anyone to cut the wires. It may have been pure malicious mischief on someone’s part. There seems no other explanation.”

  “You didn’t recognise the voice of the person who rang you up about eight o’clock? Was it a man’s or a woman’s?”

  Linda obviously made an effort to recall something before she answered.

  “I think it was a man’s voice. But it was very indistinct and somehow muffled — like someone speaking through cotton-wool, if you can imagine that.”

  “A handkerchief over the transmitter, perhaps?”

  “It might be that, possibly,” Linda agreed. “It certainly sounded very woolly and I couldn’t recognise it.”

  “Let’s try an experiment,” Sir Clinton suggested. “You know the Inspector’s voice now. He’ll go out to the kiosk down the Avenue and ring you up now, after wrapping the transmitter in his handkerchief. You’ll listen here and see if the effect is the same.”

  They tried the experiment and Linda admitted that the handkerchief wrapping had changed the timbre of Craythorn’s voice markedly, so that she could hardly recognise it.

  “Then it may have been someone you knew, after all,” Sir Clinton pointed out when the inspector returned. “It might even have been a woman with a contralto voice purposely disguising it.
I’m afraid we shan’t get much further along that line.”

  “The more I think over it,” Linda volunteered, “the more I feel that it was someone I know. I can’t tell why. It’s just an impression. And quite likely I’m imagining it just by thinking too much about it. One thing I’m quite sure of, though. I can’t put a name to the voice.”

  “If you do recall it, you’ll let us know. Now I’d like to have a word or two with your sister, if she’s here.”

  But when Miss Errington came, they extracted nothing fresh from her. She confirmed what Linda Hyson had said, but beyond that she had nothing to add.

  “I’d just like to have a look at your fuse-box,” Sir Clinton said finally, abandoning any hope of further information. “Can you let us see where it is?”

  Again Linda volunteered some useful information.

  “We’ve had fuses blown on the power-circuit several times. Our vacuum-cleaner seems to take a lot of current. But I can’t remember any of our lights ever going out.”

  “Thanks. That may be useful.”

  Sir Clinton posted the inspector at the mains-controlled clock and then withdrew fuse after fuse until the clock stopped. He examined all the fuse-holders, replaced them, and then came back to the drawing-room.

  “The clock’s on the lighting circuit,” he informed the inspector. “All the lighting fuse-holders are in new condition. There’s no stain on any of them to show that a fuse has ever gone in them, just as Mrs. Hyson said. So obviously the clock didn’t stop because the fuse had gone. Someone may have stopped it by taking out the fuse-holder, of course. But there doesn’t seem much point in that, so far as I can see. A temporary breakdown in the main cable circuit seems the most likely explanation. It’s hardly worth bothering about, since the clock stopping gives us no key to Hyson’s death in any case. Now, there’s just one thing more, and then I think we’re finished here. Just ring up the district Post Office, please, and ask when a letter would be delivered here if it had the 12.30 P.M. postmark on the envelope. While you’re doing that, I’ll have a look round the rest of the premises.”