Jack on the Gallows Tree

by Bruce, Leo

  “I see. Perhaps …”

  “You might sit there by the pillar, but Miss Stathey will be down in a minute. She’ll want you to hear about her arthritis.”

  “Then where …”

  “Keep clear of that party with the clergyman. Card-sharpers.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t advise the Harbellows either. They were acquaintances of the late Mrs Westmacott. One doesn’t want to be involved in anything like that.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “In a hotel like this where you may meet anyone you can’t be too careful. Riff-raff. Nobodies. The hotel should refuse half of them. Tradespeople, in some cases.”

  “No!”

  “I assure you of it.”

  “They look rather … retired sort of people.”

  “Retired from what? Of course if you want to associate with every Tom, Dick and Harry and very likely have your pocket picked, I don’t want to discourage you. I knew this hotel before it Went Down.”

  “Yet you stay here …”

  “Only while Sophia Carew was alive. Now that she has got herself murdered I shall leave. She mixed with the most extraordinary people. I told her a thousand times. Now you see the result.”

  “Quite. Did you know her well?”

  “She was my cousin. Reckless, quite reckless. She would talk to anyone. When you look round this hotel and see all the tag-rag and bobtail that come to such places nowadays you would think she could have been warned. But no. She was quite without discrimination. Look at the people she lived with. Baxeter, indeed.”

  “Isn’t their name Baxeter?”

  “I daresay their name is Baxeter, so far as it goes,” said the old lady sharply. “But what does that signify?”

  “I understand he’s a retired Colonel?”

  “Risen from the ranks, unless the army has gone down more than I thought. Oh, I believe perfectly worthy people in their own milieu. But fancy living with persons of that kind!”

  The old lady was tall and thin and had a long sharp nose. The corners of her lips were pulled down to give her a hostile disapproving expression.

  “Did you know Sophia Carew?” she asked Carolus, as though she had become suddenly aware of him standing beside her.

  “No. I have just arrived in Buddington for a rest cure. My name is Deene. Spelt D-e-e-n-e.”

  “Is it? Spelt D-e-e-n-e. You may sit down. My name is Tissot.”

  But before Carolus could accept the invitation a pageboy came and told him that a gentleman was waiting to see him.

  Miss Tissot heard this with a stony expression and when the boy added—“I believe he’s a police inspector,” the old lady set her lips and stared resolutely into the distance, scarcely acknowledging Carolus’s leave-taking with a slight, an almost imperceptible, inclination of the head.

  In the hall Carolus found his old friend Detective Inspector John Moore.

  “I heard you’d arrived,” said Moore. “Came round at once.”

  “But what are you doing here, John?”

  “Been transferred. Just in time for this lot. Bright, isn’t it?”

  “Where can we get a drink? Do you think there’s a bar in this place or will it only serve medicinal water?”

  They found something called an American bar in which they were the only customers.

  “Tell us all about it,” said Carolus when they were sitting in a far corner.

  “What? Oh, that,” said Moore and was silent.

  “Haven’t they given you the case?”

  “I’ve got the case all right.”

  “Teaser, is it?”

  “In a way. Yet in a way open-and-shut. Look, Carolus. If I had to find the murderer of Sophia Carew I could do it. The nephew’s as obvious a suspect as you could wish. Strongest possible motive, no alibi and a mass of other circumstantial stuff. If I was investigating the death of Mrs Westmacott I shouldn’t have a doubt. The younger son …”

  “But he was away in Lancashire, lecturing.”

  “Nothing of the sort. That was a blind. Told his mother that, he says, to get away from Buddington for a couple of nights. He again has a motive and no alibi. But how can I suspect Charlie Carew of killing Mrs Westmacott, or Gabriel Westmacott of killing Miss Carew?”

  “I see your difficulty. No suspect fits both?”

  “None. Yet there’s every indication that it was the same person.”

  “Madonna lilies, you mean?”

  “And other small points. However, you’ve come here for a rest, I understand.”

  “I shouldn’t mind hearing what you know.”

  “That’s not the hell of a lot. But for what it’s worth you can have it. First of all, the wills.”

  “How you do go straight to money, don’t you, John?”

  “I’ve rarely known it to fail, unless it’s a crime of passion, which you could scarcely call this. Sophia Carew’s will was a very simple and straightforward document. There were no small legacies. All she had was to be divided into three equal parts. One went to the nephew, Charles Carew, one to the couple in whose house she lived, Garnett and Mona Baxeter, and the third to a cousin Martha Tissot.”

  “Martha, eh?”

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Nothing. But I know the lady. Go on.”

  “Mrs Westmacott’s was a much more complicated affair and she had more to leave. There were legacies to the Bickleys, the man and wife who had worked for her for years, to various literary and artistic societies, to local charities connected with St Augustine’s church and to someone named Grace Lightfoot. There was also a sizeable legacy to a former lady’s maid of hers married to a man called Thickett. The rest goes to her children, but not in equal proportions. The eldest son, Dante, gets as much as the other two, Gabriel and Christina, put together.”

  “Nice range of suspects if you’re right in thinking money’s the motive.”

  “Now as to the bodies. Medical examination has revealed no sign of a struggle in either case. Both women had been strangled with something soft like a scarf which left no abrasions. Mrs Westmacott is believed to have died somewhere round about midnight and Miss Carew about two hours earlier. Each had been laid flat on her back with the lily stem in her clasped hands.”

  “Have you kept the stems?”

  “Of course.”

  “How many flowers to each?”

  “Are you being funny?”

  “No. I’ve a reason for asking.”

  “Three each, I believe.”

  “Had there been more?”

  “I daresay. Why?”

  “But you didn’t notice? Listen, John, phone to your office and ask, will you?”

  “I thought you were resting.”

  Moore was absent a few minutes and came back to say that one had originally had five blooms, the other four. Carolus thanked him quite seriously.

  “Miss Carew’s body,” continued Moore, “was found by a roadmender called Thickett. He swears that except when he took hold of the arm to shake Miss Carew who, he thought, was asleep, he did not touch the body. He cycled down to the call-box at the cross roads and phoned us. I was in the office and went out myself.”

  “Good.”

  “It was, our records tell us, an extremely dark and cloudy night, but there was no rain. The ground was fairly soft and we were able to distinguish some footprints, of which we have casts.”

  “Really. Footprints, eh? It’s years since I remember footprints being used as evidence.”

  “I don’t know that they will be. You see, they were size eight (men’s), and as you know this can mean almost anything. From what I can gather of this murderer he wouldn’t just have overlooked the question of footprints. A man, however large his feet (unless they were truly abnormal), could squeeze into a pair of shoes size eight if the laces had been removed. Or, however small his feet were, he could walk in them for a short distance. Also, most women could do the same.”

  “What makes you suppose anyone did
? Your murderer, knowing his shoes were of a popular size, might have just kept his own on. Why should you think he didn’t?”

  “Because an old pair of shoes, men’s, size eight, was found in the ditch between the road and the quarry. They had been worn by whoever left the footprints.”

  “Had they, by jove? This is getting interesting. Have they been identified?”

  “No, but they had been newly soled and heeled by a shoemaker called Humpling. He says that six months or more ago a pair of shoes was missing from his shop. He cannot swear these are the ones, but he is sure these were repaired by him. Of the people so far connected with the case he appears to know Mrs Westmacott’s servants the Bickleys and a man called Wright, who is chauffeur to your friend Miss Tissot. We are trying to trace the owner of the shoes that were missing from Humpling’s shop.”

  “Back to the quarry, John. What else was found?”

  “Evidence that the body had been dragged from the car to where it was lying. The clothes would have told us this in any case, but the research boys have been over the ground and say there’s no doubt of it.”

  “Any trace of the car itself?”

  “None. It must have stood clear of the verge.”

  “No one see it?”

  “We’ve had no report of anything of the kind. We’ve had no help at all. Even the medical evidence is vague. Our man is very chary of giving the exact time of death. He says, and I daresay he’s right, that nine times out of ten that’s a lot of nonsense and no doctor can tell to an hour, let alone less. It depends on a thousand factors—temperature of the air, state of the murdered person and so on. Beyond saying that he thought Miss Carew had been dead longer than Mrs Westmacott he wouldn’t for a long time commit himself. But in the end he agreed that Miss Carew was probably killed in the early part of the evening, before ten he conjectures, and Mrs Westmacott towards midnight. But he will not give evidence of that on oath, he says. It’s just his feeling on the subject.”

  “Fair enough. I’d rather have that than one of those doctors who look at a cadaver for a moment then say it has been dead for precisely eighteen and a half hours. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s more honest. But his information doesn’t help us much. He is quite convinced, however, that both the women were strangled with something soft like a silk scarf, probably drawn tight from behind.”

  “It’s the most usual method, isn’t it? What information have you about the murder of Mrs Westmacott?”

  “There’s even less to tell you. She was a large woman, older than Sophia Carew but upstanding still. Rather imposing, in a way. She was found in a little sitting-room she used in the evening and there must have been a big fire in the grate till quite late that night, because the embers were still hot in the morning.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Mrs Bickley. She came across as usual at eight o’clock and found the corpse before she had been up to the bedroom. She describes Mrs Westmacott as looking ‘horror-struck’. She cannot understand why she was not summoned on the previous evening, since there is a telephone communicating with the Bickleys’ rooms across the yard.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “None. It would seem that the woman was already sitting on the settee on which her body was found. The murderer probably gave some excuse for passing round the back of it and neatly strangled her before she could raise any alarm.”

  “No fingerprints, of course?”

  “None, needless to say, of anybody except the household. The days when murderers obligingly signed their masterpieces are over, Carolus. There was, however, one rather curious thing found in the room which neither the Bickleys nor any member of the Westmacott family admits seeing before. It looks like something off a Christmas tree. It’s a thin wire with a number of those sparkling things you have for the kids at Christmas. The wire is about a foot long and has been wound round these things at about two inch intervals.”

  “There are six of them then?”

  “Seven, actually. But it hadn’t been used to strangle the old woman or anything like that. The sparklets or whatever you call them were quite intact. Besides she, like Sophia Carew, had been strangled with something soft.”

  “Where was it found?”

  “On a little table behind the settee.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What about Sophia Carew’s car?”

  “It was in the car-park of the Granodeon Cinema. The attendant there went off duty at nine and is almost sure it wasn’t there when he left. There were no fingerprints to speak of on the car, but then people naturally have worn gloves during recent weather. Charlie Carew admits to having driven with his aunt several times lately, though; also the Baxeters and once Martha Tissot, though she has got her own car, as I told you. That’s about the lot, Carolus. See any wood for trees?”

  “Not really, I’m afraid.”

  “We’re rather inclined to think it’s a maniac. In that case there’s always anxiety about another possible murder. Heaven knows there are plenty of elderly women in this town, and one’s apt to wonder which will be found holding lilies.”

  “Is there nothing to connect the two murders?”

  “You can imagine that we’ve tried pretty hard to find something. Certain tradesmen serve the two, but I don’t think they had any mutual acquaintances. There is one thing which I’ll tell you, for what it’s worth. They had both sold some gold recently to a gold-clapper called Maurice Ebony.”

  “What’s a gold-clapper?”

  “You’re not much up in anything but murder, are you, Carolus? You should have more all-round experience. A gold-clapper is a man who runs round on the knock buying gold from private houses. He has a good many tricks and fiddles, but there’s not much we can do about it. A week or so before these murders Ebony, who is a London man and in quite a big way, was working this district. He has a woman runner who makes his appointments for him, a very attractive girl called Moira Long. She got in to see the Baxeters and Ebony bought some stuff from them. While he was doing so Sophia Carew came in and was persuaded to sell him some old-fashioned jewellery. On the following day Moira Long called at Rossetti Lodge and Ebony had what he describes as a gobble. It’s probably entirely irrelevant, but it’s the only small link we can find between the two households.”

  “He must have bought a lot more in Buddington, though?”

  “Not so much as you’d think. This place is a natural for gold-clappers and has been worked over again and again. Now, Carolus, you can get the old brain working and if you have any of your improbable ideas you might let me know. We shall go on in our plodding way, of course.”

  “All right, John. Come and see me again, won’t you?”

  4

  FOR the next three days Carolus found himself, in common with the other guests at the Royal Hydro, severely cut by Miss Tissot. Before lunch he would approach her but found that she was immersed in a novel by Charles Morgan and did not look up as he passed. When tea was served in the lounge she appeared to concentrate on her cup if Carolus was near, and although before dinner she made her appearance in a dress such as a Court governess might wear if she was to be present at a state dinner-party, she refused to let Carolus catch her eye.

  He had so much recovered during those three days, however, that on the fourth he decided mischievously to put a stop to Miss Tissot’s frigid unawareness of him. Taking his newspaper he reached the lounge earlier than usual and settled himself in Miss Tissot’s chair. Then he opened his paper and appeared to be lost in it. He felt rather than saw the old lady’s approach, but when she spoke it was without any hesitation or ambiguity.

  “You have taken my seat again. The first time it may have been a stupid blunder—this is insolence.”

  Carolus rose at once with a smile.

  “No, intrigue,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  Miss Tissot made no reply as she sat down and opened Sparkenbr
oke.

  “What a bore Charles Morgan was,” said Carolus rudely. “Or don’t you think?”

  “One can tell by his books that he was a gentleman,” said the old lady, fiercely and truthfully.

  “Miss Tissot, do you want to know who murdered your cousin?”

  “I want to know as little as possible about it. It is bad enough that my cousin should have been found dead in a ditch. It is worse that her death should be associated with that of a woman known to be a vulgar and bohemian sort of person. An artist’s model, I believe.”

  “You don’t think they were victims of the same assailant, then?”

  “I have no opinion on the subject. My cousin had so little discrimination that anything is possible. I attended the inquest much against my will. As soon as Miss Carew’s affairs are settled I shall leave Buddington and never return.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more satisfactory to have the matter cleared up?”

  “What, exactly, are you proposing, Mr Deene?”

  “I want your authority to investigate.”

  “Surely the police will do that?”

  “Of course. But I believe I could get at the truth of the matter with some discretion. I need the authority of someone closely concerned. I do not want to approach the Westmacott family for that.”

  “Do you think you can save me from further unwelcome publicity?”

  “I would try.”

  “You are, I understand, some kind of private detective?”

  “Some kind, yes. Rather a peculiar kind. I never concern myself with anything but murder.”

  “It sounds a morbid pursuit. Do I understand that you are asking for a fee?”

  “None. I shall do it because it interests me.”

  “You seem a fairly respectable young man, in spite of your impertinence in twice appropriating my chair. And your name is spelt D-e-e-n-e. I will consider the matter.”

  “Thank you, Miss Tissot. Now can I persuade you to drink an aperitif with me?”

  “Sherry and bitters,” said Miss Tissot before Carolus had finished speaking. She spoke decisively.

  “Excellent,” said Carolus and called the waiter. “Who do you think killed your cousin?”