Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  “I’ll pass that,” Wendover agreed.

  “Our next port of call was Lockhurst’s office. The old man had died the day before from that heart trouble of his, and, between that and Hyson’s death, the staff were in a bit of a muddle, trying to find out where all their clients’ shares and bonds had got to. Into the middle of this dropped a fresh poison-pen production which had been sent to Lockhurst, been overlooked or held up during his illness, and was forwarded to us by his executor, who found it among the accumulated documents. It had the same tale about Hyson using Lockhurst’s office as a rendezvous for a typist. But it wasn’t one of Ruth Jessop’s contributions. The envelope was addressed in pen and ink, a thing she avoided always.

  “By putting together one or two things we’d picked up, we identified the writer as Olive Lyndoch, the senior typist. And when I showed her the letter itself she gave herself away completely; for although she obviously didn’t read it through, she was able to answer questions about the contents without hesitation. She admitted writing it, when we drove her into a corner. Then out came a little office-drama. She’d been Hyson’s mistress. He’d thrown her over; and she was beside herself with jealousy because she imagined that he’d replaced her by another of the typists, a girl Nevern. She’d watched the office after hours one night and saw a girl in grey with a grey fur go upstairs, whom she supposed was Miss Nevern.

  “Now, curiously enough, we’d just had a confirmation of this tale. Ruth Jessop came to the office while we were there; and when she found Hyson had stolen some of her bonds, she burst out with some story about his scattering his money on women. When we questioned her about this, she told practically the same tale as Olive Lyndoch had done. She’d seen a fair-haired girl in a grey fox fur going into the office after hours.

  “We questioned the Nevern girl. She denied the whole story at once; but she couldn’t remember — naturally enough — where she had actually been on that particular night. Luckily we got at the truth via the office boy, who happened to be deeply in calf-love with Miss Nevern. He produced his diary which showed that he’d gone with her to the pictures on that particular night. That cleared her completely. To make sure, we made Miss Nevern put on her coat and fur and we confronted Ruth Jessop with her. She couldn’t identify the typist as the girl who had entered the office that night.”

  “I see where you are,” Wendover interrupted. “It was Nancy Telford who was visiting Hyson?”

  “Well,” Sir Clinton explained, “I remembered that at Mollie Keston’s wedding Nancy Telford had worn a costume and fur which tallied with the descriptions we’d had. But that proved nothing. I merely made a mental note of it at the time. Besides, you must remember that Ruth Jessop knew Nancy personally, and yet she didn’t give us any sign that she had actually recognised the girl she saw going into the office.”

  “Oh,” interjected Wendover, “then it wasn’t Nancy after all?”

  “Ruth Jessop was playing a game of her own at that moment,” Sir Clinton continued, ignoring the interruption. “She knew she was suspected of sending these poison-pen letters, so she had determined to provide herself with an alibi. She posted a telegram addressed to our headquarters and then paid her visit to Lockhurst’s office so timed as to coincide with the time the telegram was received at Waterloo Street Post Office when the postman brought in his collection. But of course we disposed of that immediately by going into the history of the telegram. That telegram accused Nancy Telford of meeting Hyson at the office, and it was signed ‘Salvator.’ Ruth Jessop used the first word that came into her head; and it so happens that she attends St. Salvator’s Church. But if she sent that wire, then she must have recognised Nancy when she saw her going into the office.”

  “Then why didn’t she say so, instead of throwing aspersions on the typist?” demanded Wendover.

  “She didn’t drag in the typist. It was the Lyndoch girl in her jealousy did that. But when we confronted Ruth Jessop with the typist she didn’t mention Nancy’s name. Why? Because that telegram was on the way, and she didn’t want to appear to know about Nancy for fear of giving herself away.”

  “I see,” commented Wendover. “And at that time you had no definite proof that this Jessop woman was actually the poison pen?”

  “Nothing we could rely on in a prosecution, so we had to go very cautiously. But once Nancy Telford’s name was definitely linked with the business I remembered two more things. At Mollie Keston’s wedding — it turns up everywhere in this affair, Squire — Nancy Telford mentioned casually that Jim Telford was a crime fan and followed all sorts of criminal cases in the newspapers. And I’d heard from Forrest once, in casual conversation, that Telford was a good boxer and ran a class to teach some ragamuffins the art of self-defence. Now that bruise on Hyson’s chin might have been produced by someone giving him the usual knock-out; and if he’d gone down flat, there might be a bruise on the back of his head. The police surgeon found one, when I asked him to look for it. A man who’s taken the knock-out could easily enough be dragged to a gas-oven and made to look like a suicide case.”

  “I suppose that’s so,” Wendover conceded reluctantly. “But that’s the merest guesswork.”

  “Of course it is,” Sir Clinton agreed at once. “For all one could tell, the bruise on the back of the head might have been caused by someone sandbagging him, previous to gassing him. But we couldn’t leave Telford out of account. I turned Craythorn onto that. He asked Telford to come down here and see him; and I suspect the inspector made rather a hash of that interview owing to lack of tact. However, he managed to elicit a thing or two, all the same. He learned that Telford knew the Hysons had a gas-cooker in their kitchen and not an electric one; and that he knew Thursday was their maid’s night out. Against that, he found that Telford smoked Algonquin A tobacco; whereas the stuff we found on Hyson’s hearth was Wainwright’s Trafalgar brand. But a man can change his tobacco if he chooses, so that didn’t mean much.

  “Craythorn then asked if Telford had received any of these poison-pen letters or if his wife had got any. Telford said that if Nancy had received any, she’d never spoken to him about them. He denied that he had received any himself.

  “That was more than a bit fishy, as you can see for yourself, Squire; for we knew from the Post Office expert that Nancy Telford actually had received one poison-pen letter on the day of her death. But it was just possible she hadn’t said anything about it to her husband, so far as we knew at that time. And when Craythorn questioned him about Nancy’s acquaintanceship with Hyson, Telford lost his temper and denied furiously that there had been anything wrong.”

  “That meant neither one thing nor another,” Wendover commented. “He was almost certain to say that in any case.”

  “Obviously,” Sir Clinton agreed. “But apparently Telford’s manner got Craythorn’s back up, and he asked him bluntly to account for his movements on the night that Hyson died. And the result was one of the best alibis that could well be produced. That night, Telford was at Glen Terret, alone in his cottage and just getting over a bad bout of sickness. He had a short-wave transmitter there, worked off the grid current; and when he felt a bit better he got into touch with a man Netherby in town here, whom he often speaks to on the short waves. That was round about nine o’clock on that Thursday night; so unless you can see your way to get Telford down here at that very time, his alibi’s a cast-iron one.”

  “A man can’t be in two places at once, unless he’s a bird,” said Wendover, quoting Sir Boyle Roche. “That’s plain enough. You checked his story, of course?”

  “Naturally,” said Sir Clinton, dryly. “Craythorn interviewed this Netherby man, and the story was absolutely lock-fast. Telford had spoken to him about nine o’clock, quite a long conversation. He’d asked Netherby to check the frequency of his transmission, and Netherby did so, finding it quite exact. Netherby was a good witness, for he keeps his log very carefully. They have to keep a log of their transmissions, it appears; it’s a condition of their l
icences. Netherby produced his log and was even able to tell us that there had been a short interruption in Telford’s transmission just as he was testing the frequency. Telford had mentioned that he’d been sick that day. There’s no question of any faking by gramophone records or any wheeze of that kind. And Netherby knows Telford’s voice beyond any doubt. He asked what the weather was like up in Glen Terret, and Telford told him what it was: ‘Cool, dry, some stars showing, wind N.E.’ Craythorn wasn’t easily satisfied about the voice being right, but Netherby said he’d go into court and swear to it if necessary. He knows the voices of a lot of these amateurs; he mentioned a few that he often talked with, some fellow Stevens, and another local man called Scarsdale, who’s abroad at the moment. Besides, the frequency of the transmission, he said, identified the transmitter. So there’s not a shadow of doubt that it was Telford speaking on the short waves at 9.15 P.M. that night.”

  “Pass that,” commented Wendover with ill-concealed relief.

  “Now we come back to anonymous letters again,” Sir Clinton continued. “Someone — not Ruth Jessop or Olive Lyndoch — wrote me an unsigned note telling me that Barsett had been bluffing us and that he had paid a visit to Hyson on the night of his death. Barsett had told Craythorn that on that evening he stayed indoors; and his servants had confirmed this so far as their knowledge went. So I looked up Barsett myself and told him some information had come to hand which might make it advisable to allow him to emend his previous tale if he chose to do so. He crawled down without much ado, and told me a long detailed story of how he had gone to Hyson and offered him a good round sum in cash to fake a suicide and disappear. The idea was, of course, to leave Mrs. Hyson under the impression that her husband was dead and she was free to marry Barsett. I listened to his tale with a certain amount of admiration, Squire. First and foremost, he’d woven into it a vast amount of details which covered practically all we had found at Hyson’s house when we went over it. Secondly, by his account, he had been alone with Hyson all the time between 8.30 P.M. and 9.45 P.M., so that his story gave Mrs. Hyson a complete alibi covering that period. Thirdly, his tale didn’t exclude the very obvious possibility that he might have knocked Hyson on the head himself during the time he admitted he was in the house; and it takes a pretty bold man to volunteer that sort of news about himself and run the risk of the results, for remember that the medical evidence pointed to Hyson dying about 8.30 or 9 P.M. so far as it went.”

  “If it was a lie, he must be devilish fond of Linda Hyson,” Wendover interjected. “But it may have been true, in which case . . .”

  “He was ‘for it,’ ” Sir Clinton completed the sentence. “Quite so. To counter that, he had to account for Hyson’s suicide after he had retired from the scene. To cover that, he told me that Hyson was all on wires during their interview. But all the evidence about Hyson on that evening depicts him as perfectly normal in behaviour. That was a weak spot. But besides that, he made a downright blunder. Everything he had picked up from Mrs. Hyson, he used in his tale, even the stopping of the electric clock at 9.20 P.M. He had noticed that, he told me. But he never mentioned the electric lights going out when the current failed in the main! Can you imagine anyone telling a plain and detailed story and forgetting that episode? Incredible, to my mind. Fancy sitting for a minute or two in the dark and not remembering to mention it.”

  “A bit fishy,” Wendover agreed.

  “I got Craythorn to find out how the mains run in that district,” Sir Clinton went on. “Hyson’s house and Barsett’s house are on different cables. So if Barsett had been sitting at home that evening, he wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong. His own house lights would have burned perfectly all the time. And Mrs. Hyson wasn’t in the house to notice the temporary extinction, so she said nothing to him about it when they’d been talking matters over.”

  “Weighty, but not conclusive,” was Wendover’s judgement.

  “Well, then, add to that fact that the anonymous letter was addressed on Barsett’s own typewriter, and that the lettering was clipped from the Times, which happens to be Barsett’s daily paper. The whole affair was obviously a put-up job by Barsett himself to shield Mrs. Hyson, whom he supposed we might have under suspicion. There wasn’t a word of truth in it from start to finish.”

  “He must be devilish fond of her,” Wendover repeated. “It takes some grit to run a risk of that size on a woman’s account; for if you had taken him seriously he might well have found himself in Queer Street.”

  “Oh, quite the young Curtius,” admitted the Chief Constable. “I’ve wondered how he proposed to wriggle out of the fix if we had accepted his tale. He’d left precious few loopholes for escape. It’s lucky for him that he wasn’t quite so clever as he supposed.”

  “Had you suspected Linda Hyson?” Wendover demanded.

  “A woman is physically able to sandbag an unsuspecting man,” Sir Clinton said, rather elusively. “One must take everything into account, Squire. But let’s take things in their order. Duncannon ran down his quarry and the poison-pen pest turned out to be Ruth Jessop, as I told you. I had suspected that she’d be an important witness if we could lay hands on her; and I’ll tell you why. In the first place, one blind of Hyson’s drawing-room window comes down askew and leaves a rift through which one can see into the room from outside. So when Ruth Jessop delivered that letter, there was a chance that she had seen into that room at a critical stage in the proceedings. Further, that was the last letter she delivered by hand, which looked as if she had got some scare which put her off the method. So when we got hold of her, I put her through it pretty stiffly; and she admitted that she had looked into the room about half-past eight. She’d seen Hyson there, and along with him another man whom she couldn’t describe beyond saying that he wore light tweeds. Now Barsett declared that he wore a dinner-jacket when he visited Hyson at that time; so that was another spike driven through his yarn. Obviously his whole tale was pure concoction. But here was sound enough evidence that someone had been with Hyson between eight and nine o’clock. Incidentally, Ruth Jessop confessed to sending Nancy Telford the letter which drove her to suicide.”

  “What a vile little beast she must be,” said Wendover, bitterly. “She must have known what damage she was doing. Didn’t she show any remorse?”

  “All she thought about was her own skin,” Sir Clinton said contemptuously. “Leave her out of it for the present, and put yourself in my place. Where would your suspicions have landed you at that stage?”

  Wendover pondered for several minutes before replying.

  “Let’s take the people who had a grudge against Hyson, to start with,” he began. “First of all, there was this Lyndoch girl, his discarded mistress. She evidently hated him, as witness the letter she sent to Lockhurst. Had she an alibi?”

  “Nothing but her own word for it that she stayed in her flat all that evening.”

  “Then she had a motive and an opportunity,” Wendover decided. “Young Telford you’ve ruled out by his alibi. Barsett you’ve put out of court by breaking down his story. H’m! That leaves . . . Linda Hyson and her sister, if they put their heads together and manufactured an alibi. Well, I simply don’t believe those girls had a hand in it. It’s simply not in character. If Linda Hyson was going to step outside her code at all, she could have got rid of Hyson by divorcing him. There was no need to kill him.”

  “You’ve omitted one possible,” Sir Clinton pointed out chaffingly. “What about Ruth Jessop? She had opportunity, since we know she was actually at the house that night; and she may have had a motive, for all we can tell. Anything might happen, with a man like Hyson, you know.”

  “No, that’s not in character either,” retorted Wendover. “He wouldn’t have wasted time on an unattractive woman.”

  “Well, where are you? Everybody cleared — and yet someone put Hyson through it. Shall I outline my own procedure at that point? I rang up the Post Office. Then I got in touch with the Heston aerodrome. And I made some inquiries
from the local Electricity Department. Oh, yes, I started some inquiries among tobacco shops. And when I’d got my answers, I began to see light clearly enough. Think it over, Squire.”

  Wendover settled back in his chair and knit his brows in an effort to follow the Chief Constable’s train of reasoning.

  “The tobacco inquiries had to do with the stuff on the hearth, of course,” he began slowly. “Then the Electricity Department would be able to tell you the exact time of the mains failure. But you had that already, to the dot, by the time the electric clock stopped. Heston aerodrome . . . I don’t see where flying comes into the business. And I suppose the Post Office had something to do with the poison-pen stuff. . . . No, I’m not much further forward, Clinton. I’ll admit it freely.”

  “Heston aerodrome broadcasts the flying weather over the whole country,” Sir Clinton reminded him, “and the Post Office controls amateur wireless, remember.”

  Wendover glanced up sharply.

  “You’re not thinking of arresting young Telford, surely?”

  The Chief Constable shook his head.

  “No, I’m not, Squire.”

  “Then I don’t see the point of these inquiries,” Wendover confessed. “But go on with your story.”

  “Certainly, if you’ll let me tell it without being interrupted every few sentences. Take the inquiry at Heston aerodrome first. I asked them about the weather over Glen Terret on the night of Hyson’s death; and the reply was: ‘Cold, cloudy, continuous heavy rain, wind S.S.W.’ That didn’t fit in with young Telford’s report to Netherby: ‘Cool, dry, some stars showing, wind N.E.’ I began to wonder a bit when I got the Heston report. Then came the turn of our Electricity Department down town. They informed me that the interruption of the current in the mains that night was very short, perhaps a minute and a half. Netherby, when Craythorn questioned him, happened to mention that Telford’s transmission was interrupted for ‘about a minute’ while he was testing the frequency of Telford’s transmitter; and that interruption occurred just at the time when the electric clock stopped in Hyson’s drawing-room. That made me infer that Telford’s message did not come from Glen Terret at all, but from quite close at hand, here. That’s confirmed in a way by the fact that Netherby found his reception first-class — ‘absolutely solid,’ as he put it to Craythorn.