Tragedy at Law

by Cyril Hare

  “Well, you can verify them for yourself, if you care to refer to certain exalted quarters. I had rather you didn’t quote me as your source of information, however. I heard of it in strict confidence from—from the person chiefly concerned.”

  “Quite,” said the inspector. “There is no doubt, according to the medical evidence, that Lady Barber saved her husband’s life on that occasion. It is a pity she was less successful on the other.”

  “I don’t want to seem callous,” Pettigrew observed, “but to me it is nothing less than astonishing that any woman could be married to Barber for so many years and still want to save his life.” He glanced hastily at the detective and went on, “At all events, in the circumstances, I am extremely glad for her sake that she did.”

  Mallett nodded silently and rose to his feet.

  “I have taken up a great deal of your time, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said, “and I must thank you for bearing with me so long.”

  “Not at all. It has been a most interesting chat, for me, at any rate, but not, I fear, very useful to you. I don’t honestly think that I can give you any further assistance. I could let you have a list of people who disliked Barber sufficiently to want to put him out of the way, if you like. It would be a very long one, and would contain some quite distinguished names, but I dare say you have enough suspects already, and except to save my own neck I don’t want to cause anybody else any trouble.”

  “I should be quite satisfied,” Mallett replied, “if you could give me the name of one person who had a motive for killing the Judge on the 12th of April 1940, long after the circuit was over—if the circuit had anything to do with it, beyond supplying the knife.”

  “The 12th of April!” said Pettigrew. “So it was! Dear me, yes! Well, good-bye, Inspector. Let me know if I can help you any further.”

  He held out his hand. Mallett did not take it. Instead he looked searchingly at the barrister.

  “Yes, Mr. Pettigrew,” he said. “The 12th of April. May I ask what there is about that date that impresses you?”

  “Nothing,” Pettigrew assured him in some confusion. “Nothing at all. It was only that—that you detective fellows are always so precise about your dates, as I said just now.”

  “But there seemed to be something about this particular date that attracted your attention,” the inspector persisted.

  “No, no,” Pettigrew protested. His usual self-assurance seemed to have deserted him entirely. “To-day’s the sixteenth, isn’t it? I was surprised that it should have been such a short time ago. It seems longer. This business has been a fearful shock to me, as you can imagine, and I had quite lost count of the days….”

  His voice trailed off uncertainly. Mallett looked at him for a moment in silence, and then with a curt, “Good day, sir!” turned on his heels and left the room.

  After he had gone, Pettigrew went back to his desk. He consulted the calendar as though to make certain of the date. Then he went to a bookshelf and pulled out a volume of law reports. After studying this for a moment he sat down and wrote a very short letter, which he took out to the post himself.

  Mallett meanwhile was in a telephone kiosk. He rang up Old Jewry and was immediately connected with Superintendent Brough.

  “That’s you at last, Inspector?” said Brough excitedly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. This is important. I’ve just ascertained that Granby was in town during the whole of April the twelfth.”

  “Sorry, but I’m not interested,” said Mallett. “But can you find out for me the name of the firm of solicitors acting for Mr. Sebastian Sebald-Smith?”

  Chapter 24

  EXPLANATIONS IN THE TEMPLE

  Pettigrew was late at his chambers next morning. John, who was a stickler for punctuality, whether the work in hand necessitated it or not, greeted him with reproachful looks and was barely propitiated by the explanation that the Underground train by which he had travelled had been for some reason or another held up outside South Kensington station for three quarters of an hour. Grudgingly John admitted that there were no appointments that morning and only one set of papers which had come in over night and were not pressing. He had hardly left the room before he was back again.

  “That Mr. Marshall is here, wanting to see you, sir,” he announced. “He has a young lady with him.”

  Pettigrew, who had arrived at the chambers looking more harassed and care-worn than seemed warranted even by a breakdown on the Underground, cheered up at once.

  “My dear fellow!” he cried, as the door opened to admit Derek and Sheila. “This is an unexpected pleasure indeed. I thought you were still in fetters. And Miss Bartram too—the last time I saw you, you were looking distinctly dishevelled. Congratulations on your release. Or are you only on bail?”

  “No,” said Derek. “It’s all over and done with so far as we are concerned. I thought I must come round and tell you at once. We both came up before the Lord Mayor this morning. The case didn’t take more than a minute, and he was really very decent about it. He fined me forty shillings and Sheila was bound over.”

  “Gross partiality. If I had been called as a witness I should have had to say that of the two of you Miss Bartram was far the more determined in her assault on the police.”

  “The one snag about it all is,” said Derek, “that I’m not likely to keep my job at the Ministry after this.”

  “We must do something about that. I have a few friends at court, you know, and it so happens that one of them is a high-up in your show. I think I can save your services for your country yet. But tell me about Beamish. Was he dealt with in the same charitable spirit?”

  “No.” Derek looked serious. “His case was put back for seven days. They said something about a further charge being preferred.”

  “I suppose that means he killed that beastly old Judge,” Sheila put in.

  “H’m. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions about that. I’ve a notion that quite a number of charges could be preferred against Beamish. It would be rather a sell for the great British public, all agog to hear a man accused of murder, if he’s only run in for dispensing drink without a licence at Corky’s night club, or something like that.”

  “But then who did kill him?” Sheila asked.

  Pettigrew did not reply. His ear was cocked towards the door behind which sounds of altercation could be heard. Presently John came into the room, a pained expression on his face.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but the inspector from Scotland Yard is back here again. He’s got another man with him and they want to see you at once. I told them you were engaged, but——”

  Pettigrew’s face was rather white as he replied. “Show them in, John. If Mr. Marshall and Miss Bartram like to stay, perhaps it would be as well.”

  Mallett and Superintendent Brough entered. They both looked grave and purposeful.

  “You know this lady and gentleman, of course,” Pettigrew said to them. “I think that they will be interested to hear what you have to say. In fact, if it is what I expect, I’m not sure that they haven’t a right to hear it.”

  The superintendent looked at Mallett, who nodded his head slowly, pulling at his moustache. Nothing was said for a moment, and then the inspector, clearing his throat, spoke abruptly.

  “I have come to tell you, Mr. Pettigrew, that Lady Barber threw herself under an electric train at South Kensington station this morning.”

  Pettigrew, who was standing beside his desk, felt with his hand for the chair behind him and then collapsed into it.

  “So that’s why my train was late this morning,” he murmured.

  “I’m afraid this is rather a shock for you,” said Mallett sympathetically.

  Pettigrew raised his head.

  “On the contrary,” he said, “I am very much relieved. I was afraid you had come to tell me that she had been arrested.”

  “A note was found in her handbag,” Mallett went on, “I think it is in your handwriting?”

  Petti
grew glanced at the slip of paper which the inspector placed before him.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is. I suppose I am responsible for what has happened.”

  “It is a very heavy responsibility,” said Brough, speaking for the first time.

  “I recognize that,” Pettigrew replied. “But I am quite prepared to face it. That is—I suppose you were intending to arrest her for murder, weren’t you?” he asked almost anxiously.

  “Our inquiries were not complete,” said the superintendent. “But in the normal course, I should probably have applied for a warrant during the next few days.”

  “Then I did right,” Pettigrew said firmly. “Because, God help me! I loved the woman.”

  “Are you telling us,” Mallett put in, “that this note was the cause of Lady Barber making away with herself?”

  “Certainly.” Pettigrew’s brief outburst of emotion had passed, and he was once more his controlled, sardonic self. “I thought our discussion had been upon that basis.”

  “Because if so, I should like to know what it means.”

  Pettigrew glanced at the note again and smiled wryly.

  “It is a little cryptic to the layman, I agree,” he said. “But to anyone who could understand it, it is very much to the point. It simply refers to—— But aren’t we putting the cart before the horse, Inspector? And worse, aren’t we talking in riddles in front of Mr. Marshall? He has been trying to read this document upside down for the last five minutes, and he still can’t make out what it’s all about. As one who was very recently a self-confessed murderer, I think he should know the whole story, and you are certainly the only person who knows it. I can add my little piece of exegesis at the end if you wish.”

  Mallett hesitated for a moment.

  “You will understand, of course, that all this is entirely confidential?” he said.

  “We do, indeed. So far as I am concerned, Mr. Marshall will tell you that I long ago impressed upon him the virtue of hushing things up. He didn’t altogether agree with me at the time, but I think that subsequent events have rather tended to change his views on the matter. As for Miss Bartram——”

  “I shan’t breathe a word,” said Sheila earnestly.

  “I trust not. Your chances of a wedding present from me depend entirely upon your discretion. I hope the threat is sufficient. Now, Inspector, make yourself comfortable and light your pipe if you wish. We are all ears.”

  “It is a little difficult to know where to start,” said Mallett. “But perhaps the best way to begin is to explain how this case struck me when I was called upon to consider it the first time. You will recollect sir,”—he turned to Derek—“that when Lady Barber asked me to come to her club to discuss the unpleasant events that had occurred at the first three towns on the Circuit, she was rather annoyed with me for suggesting that she might be wrong in supposing that they were all due to one cause. My reason for so thinking was that there was one incident which quite clearly did not fit in with the others. I mean, of course, the chocolates filled with carbide which were sent to the Lodgings at Southington. I had very little doubt that the two anonymous letters, sent one before and one just after the motor accident, were the work of Heppenstall, whom we knew to be in the neighbourhood at the time. There seemed every reason to believe that he was also responsible for the assault on Lady Barber at Wimblingham.”

  Mallett paused and tugged at his moustache points. He looked embarrassed.

  “As a matter of fact, I proved wrong there,” he said. “Not that it made any difference to the argument, as it turned out. But Heppenstall was entirely innocent of what occurred at Wimblingham. He has succeeded in satisfying us of that beyond any doubt.”

  “Then who was it?” asked Derek in some eagerness.

  Mallett smiled.

  “You were perfectly right in your guess, Mr. Marshall,” he said. “It was the person who kicked you so severely in the ribs that morning.”

  “Beamish?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you said yourself that if he had wanted to attack anyone at night he would have put on rubber shoes or something like that,” Derek objected.

  “Quite. But Beamish didn’t want to attack anybody. His assault on Lady Barber was really in the nature of an accident. He only committed it in order to get away from the corridor before his identity could be discovered.”

  “What was he doing there at that time in the morning, then?”

  “We have been at a good deal of pains to discover that. He was simply making his way back to bed after breaking into the Lodgings. You see, he had been——” Mallett glanced at Sheila and coloured slightly—“elsewhere most of that night, if you follow me. I am afraid his moral character was——”

  “Well, well,” said Pettigrew tolerantly. “We mustn’t be too hard on him. After all, the beds in Lodgings were notoriously uncomfortable. One can hardly blame him for seeking softer lying somewhere else. But go on, Inspector.”

  “As I was saying,” Mallett resumed, “I thought that I could refer all the other events to a single source. But not the affair of the chocolates. That was a totally different type of crime. In fact, it was less like a crime than a particularly malicious practical joke.

  “Now in the ordinary way, practical jokers are very difficult to detect, because the whole essence of the game is irresponsibility and absence of motive. But in this case, there was this much to go on. The Judge was already involved in a trouble unconnected altogether with Heppenstall’s release from prison—the motor accident in which Mr. Sebald-Smith was injured. Simply because on the balance of probabilities it was more likely that he should have two ill-wishers than three, I set about connecting the affair of the chocolates with the accident. I made some discreet inquiries about Mr. Sebald-Smith, ascertained his connection with a lady named Parsons, satisfied myself as to her character and that she would have a certain degree of familiarity with the Judge’s taste in confectionery, and as a result came to the conclusion that she was the person responsible for that episode.”

  “Apart from that, you took no steps in the matter?” Pettigrew asked.

  “No. There were really no steps to take. I had no evidence then on which to arrest Heppenstall, and I knew that I could keep an eye on him and see that the Judge came to no further harm through him. As a matter of fact, we pulled him in a few weeks later on a charge of fraud, but that was incidental. So far as the lady was concerned, I didn’t look on her as a potential danger, although she might prove herself a nuisance from time to time.

  “That was the position up to the end of Wimblingham Assizes. During the rest of the Circuit, I received reports from the police forces at the various towns, which worried me a good deal. I therefore took the opportunity of seeing Mr. Marshall immediately on his return and getting an account from him while the facts were still fresh in his memory. This time, the incidents which had to be considered were, successively, the dead mouse in the parcel, the Judge’s fall downstairs and the third anonymous letter, all at Rampleford and finally the gas escape in the Judge’s room at Whitsea. There was in fact another incident which was not reported to me until long after but which proved to be the most sinister of all—the disappearance of the knife from the court at Eastbury. But I doubt whether I should have been much the wiser if I had been told of it.

  “The dead mouse, of course, gave no trouble at all. It fitted in perfectly neatly with the poisoned chocolates, and confirmed me in my views about them. But the other matters were altogether different. They fitted in with nothing at all. Most emphatically, they did not fit in with the incidents on the earlier part of the Circuit. And above all in contrast to those incidents, they seemed to me on examination to show every sign of being bogus.”

  “Bogus?” said Derek. “What made you think that? After all, the Judge was twice in quite serious danger. He did fall downstairs and he was nearly gassed that night at Whitsea. Nothing that happened before came anything like so close to killing him as that.”

 
“Exactly,” said Mallett. “They both looked like quite determined attempts on his life. But they both failed. In each case, Lady Barber was at hand to save him—and to save him before witnesses, too. The fact did not of course prove that she was responsible for them, but it did look as though whoever had made these pretended attempts had so arranged matters that somebody would be at hand to see that they failed in their object. The next thing I noticed about them, of course, was that while the earlier incidents might have been the work of a member of the Judge’s household, these almost certainly must have been. As for the anonymous letter, it seemed to prove the point up to the hilt. It was found at the Lodgings, you will remember, after the Judge’s party had left. Now no outsider, going to leave a letter of that description, would hand it in at the door when he could see for himself that the person it was intended for had gone or was in the act of going. The writer of that letter meant it to be found at the last possible moment, but in time for it to reach the Judge before his train left. I concluded that in all probability it had been left on the hall table by one of the party while actually leaving the house. In the hurry of departure it would be very easy to do, especially if the writer arranged to be one of the last to go.”

  “I remember now,” Derek put in, “Lady Barber kept us all waiting while she ran back into the house for her bag, which she said she had left in the drawing-room. She insisted on going herself, although I offered to get it for her.”

  “No doubt that was how it was managed,” said Mallett. “Well! There I was left with a very odd case on my hands. On the one hand, I had been appealed to by Lady Barber to protect her husband against attack from outside, and on the other I found somebody inside engineering a series of sham attacks, and, after a careful process of elimination, I was driven to the conclusion that that somebody was Lady Barber herself. Yet I was quite convinced of the sincerity of her appeal in the first place, and from what Mr. Marshall told me I was equally convinced that during the second part of the Circuit she was still genuinely doing all that she could, with his assistance, to guard her husband against any further assaults of what I may call the Wimblingham type. Why?