Jack on the Gallows Tree

by Bruce, Leo

  “When did they meet last?” Carolus asked Raydell.

  “Not for a month or more,” said Miss Lightfoot when this had been put to her. “I’m not as active myself as I was and she was very taken up with her church and that. I’m Wesleyan and have no patience with all that bowing and scraping she went in for.”

  There was the sound of a bell and Raydell, saying it was the Westmacotts, stood up. Miss Lightfoot remarked without much enthusiasm that she hoped Carolus would find out who had murdered her old friend, and left them, clumping heavily from the room.

  It occurred to Carolus when he met Dante Westmacott and his wife that none of those connected with the two old murdered ladies had shown much disposition to mourn them. He realized that in England the wearing of black clothes and strict rules of mourning had gone out when the first world war brought the necessity for mourning to most homes and the thing had lapsed through excess. He did not expect to see widows’ weeds and crepe arm-bands, but surely near relatives, in this case a son and daughter-in-law, might have been a little less jovial in manner and flamboyant in dress.

  Dan Westmacott was a big jolly man in a glaring check suit with a brass-buttoned vermilion waistcoat and a loud tie. His wife was, Carolus agreed with general opinion, a very beautiful woman, and her mustard-coloured tweeds set off the brilliance of her own colouring.

  Raydell was soon shaking cocktails, and chatter and the smell of dry Martinis filled the air.

  “How is Angela?” Dan asked Raydell.

  “She is in splendid form but I haven’t taken her to the Dragon again. You shall see her presently, Deene. She’s an endearing creature.”

  “Is Angela your ocelot? I’d like to see her.”

  “I’m on Miss Shapely’s side,” said Gloria Westmacott musically. “Angela is not the creature to take into a crowded bar.”

  Dan turned to Carolus.

  “I’ve read of some of your cases,” he said. “I hope you get to the bottom of this one. My mother and I did not see eye to eye about a good many things. My brother was her favourite. But it’s damned distressing to know that she was strangled. Yes, I will have another, Ray.”

  “Did you know the other victim?” asked Carolus abruptly and with such point that the question could not be ignored. It caused rather an awkward pause and Dan looked at his wife.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Met her through the people she lived with.”

  “The Baxeters.”

  “Don’t ask me how I came to know them first, because I can’t remember. But for a long time now, must be a couple of years, they’ve been driving out to my farm to buy what they call fresh produce, because it seems that anything which has gone through the hands of a retailer is contaminated so far as they’re concerned. They’re cranks, as you know.”

  “You met Miss Carew at their house?”

  Dan smiled to Raydell.

  “I didn’t know I was going to be put through a catechism when I met Deene,” he said good-humouredly. “But of course I don’t mind telling you anything you want to know. I met her there at lunch. Extraordinary occasion. Thank God they had provided a couple of chops for Sophia Carew and me, because the rest of it was inedible. Radish and aubergine soup, forcemeat rissoles, lentil fritters, hominy croquettes, that sort of thing. I liked old Sophia, though. Game old girl, I thought. I was damned sorry to hear about her death.”

  “May I ask you one more question, Mr Westmacott? On the evening of the two murders you left Raydell early after conciliating Miss Shapely. Where did you go?”

  Dante Westmacott flushed with annoyance.

  “This is going too far,” he said. “You are asking me to produce an alibi. Are you going to suggest I murdered my own mother?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. But you’re one of the people most closely connected with the case and it is as well for everyone’s sake, if I’m going to clear this thing up, that I should know where you were when the two women were killed.”

  “He’s quite right, dear,” said Gloria unexpectedly.

  “But it’s ridiculous. I don’t see why I should discuss the thing. Have you asked my brother this?”

  “Yes. He has given me an account of his movements that evening.”

  “I see. I have nothing to hide, but I resent being asked. However, after leaving Raydell I drove out here to pick up Gloria in time to take her to the pictures. Last house at the Granodeon.”

  “Did you see Gilling the car-park attendant?”

  “Of course I saw Gilling,” said Dante Westmacott, whose joviality seemed to have given place to irritation.

  “He was telling us about his eczema, remember, dear?” said Gloria.

  “Something of the sort. What more do you want to know?”

  “After the pictures …”

  “After the pictures we came straight home.”

  “By the usual route? That is to say, past the quarry?”

  “Naturally. There’s no other way out here, unless you make an enormous detour.”

  “You haven’t any idea about these murders, Mr Westmacott? You knew of no one, for instance, who had threatened your mother or anything of the sort?”

  “No. So far as I know my mother was popular in the town. She ought to have been, anyway. She gave enough money away.”

  “You have no suspicions?”

  “None that I want to repeat. I gather that the police think the murders were done by someone at least temporarily insane. Don’t you share that view?”

  “Not if by insane you mean someone with a mania for homicide. No, I think there was another motive.”

  “How could there be? There was no connection between the women. Who could have a motive for killing both?”

  “There were certain links,” said Carolus quietly.

  At that moment Raydell, who had left the room a few minutes earlier, returned with the ocelot. She was a handsome creature, not much larger than a large domestic cat, and seemed perfectly restful and at home. Her smooth yellowish fur was beautifully spangled with black rings above, and her chest was white.

  Everyone, glad it seemed of the diversion, made a fuss of her.

  12

  CAROLUS had made an appointment by telephone with Maurice Ebony and set out for London next morning to keep it.

  The All-British Bullion Company, it seemed, had its offices in Mersey Street off the Tottenham Court Road. Had Carolus imagined these to be as palatial as the name was resounding he would have been disappointed, for Mersey Street was mean and murky, running into a region of small Cypriot restaurants and foreign newsagents.

  He found the building, but its ground floor was occupied by a barber’s shop and the staircase behind an open door looked dirty and forbidding. He asked in the shop where he might find Mr Ebony and was told on the first floor. Climbing, he knocked at the nearest door, which was opened at once by a pleasant-looking girl.

  “Come in,” she said. “Maurice will be through in a minute. He’s just shaving.”

  Carolus entered a tawdry sitting-room and sat there to wait.

  Ebony, when he entered, was a surprise, a smooth and impeccable man in his thirties, glossy from his slick dark hair and brown moustache to his brilliant patent-leather shoes. He wore pin-stripe trousers and a blackcoat. He was civil enough to Carolus but seemed alert, if not a little nervous.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes, Mr Ebony. I’m investigating the double murder at Buddington.”

  “What’s it to do with me?”

  “You’re the missing link,” said Carolus evenly. “You’re one of the very few people who had dealings with both the murdered women.”

  “Look, Mr Deene, my business is gold-buying, nothing else. I don’t know anything about the murders.”

  “No? We don’t always know how much we do know, Mr Ebony. Would you mind telling me about your experiences in Buddington?”

  “I went down there to buy gold.”

  “Of course. I imagine it was a good plac
e for that?”

  “It was once. There’ve been too many nibbling at it. In this job the competition’s fierce.”

  “Still a town of elderly retired people …”

  “They’ve been milked dry, Mr Deene. Scarcely a scrap of red left in the place. My assistant had a job to find me an In at all.”

  “The first was the Baxeters’, perhaps?”

  “That the Colonel and his wife? I remember. They may live on potato peelings and porridge, but d’you know what they did? Produced their own set of scales. Would you believe it?”

  “You didn’t mind that, of course?”

  “N-no. But it seemed a liberty. Their own scales. I only bought a couple of scraps. Then this Miss Carew came in and I was able to buy a few bits and pieces. At market prices, of course.”

  “What about that gold chain of hers?”

  “Silver gilt,” said Mr Ebony.

  Carolus suddenly leaned across and pulled forward the lapel of the other’s immaculate black jacket. Behind it was some white paste.

  “Silver gilt, Mr Ebony? Then why do you keep silver nitrate paste behind your lapel?”

  “Smart, aren’t you? Who put you up to this lark?”

  “I’m not a man of action, Mr Ebony. I’m a schoolmaster. I believe in books. But when I found myself caught out as an ignoramus in the art of gold-clapping I looked it up.”

  “Where?”

  “In a book called Smiling Damned Villain by Rupert Croft-Cooke. It is the life-story of a criminal called Paul Axel Lund, among whose other activities was a spell of gold-clapping. He gives very explicit details.”

  “The lousy grass.”

  “They enabled me to understand how your ‘silver gilt’ chain from Miss Carew was bought. How long did it take?”

  “I was only with her about half an hour.”

  “Then you saw Mrs Westmacott and had what you described as a gobble.”

  “I bought some stuff, yes. But there was no silver gilt about that. In fact I left a deposit on some gold which I haven’t been back to collect.”

  “The Swotch, eh?”

  “What do you mean the Swotch? You’ve been reading too much detective fiction.”

  “This wasn’t fiction. It was fact.”

  “We’ve all got a living to earn.”

  “Very true. Did you buy from anyone else?”

  “No. I never had another touch.”

  “Have you been down to Buddington again?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact I came through there yesterday. That will show you I’ve nothing to be afraid of in Buddington.”

  “Yesterday? Did you buy anything?”

  “Look, Mr Deene, my business is legal. If I wanted to leave a deposit with Mrs Westmacott and not go back that’s my business. I don’t see that what I buy or who I buy from is anything to do with you.”

  Carolus stood up. He spoke very seriously.

  “I’m not interested in your business qua business. I’m not a policeman. Your little frauds are no affair of mine, Mr Ebony. This is a matter of murder. Two harmless old women have been strangled and others may be in danger.”

  “But what’s that to do with me?”

  “Will you please believe me when I say that, whether or not you’re aware of it, it has a great deal? If you bought any gold yesterday from any woman in Buddington she may be in serious danger.”

  Maurice Ebony looked at Carolus fixedly.

  “I don’t want to bring trouble to anyone,” he said. “At the same time I don’t want trouble myself. I’ve seen too much of it.”

  “Where did you buy gold yesterday?”

  “As a matter of fact it was from the woman who worked for Mrs Westmacott. Bickley, her name is. She knew about my buying the old lady’s and asked me to come and see hers. There’s proof that I give good prices and no funny business. She asked me at the time, only I waited till these murders had died down a bit. I bought from no one but her.”

  “What did you buy?”

  “Nothing much. Old bits and pieces. They were the woman’s own stuff, I’m sure. She told me about them while Mrs Westmacott was still alive.”

  “Did you talk about this while you were down there?”

  “Certainly not. I never discuss my business with anyone. Least of all in a town like Buddington, where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “Who was present when you bought the gold?”

  “Only the woman herself and just as we were talking business her husband came in.”

  “It was in their cottage?”

  “Yes. But she took me over there. I called at the house, Rossetti Lodge.”

  “Leaving your car outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “I daresay you’ve got a showy car of some kind, Mr Ebony?”

  “Well yes. It’s a Chev. You need a smart-looking car in my business. Gives confidence.”

  “Also left outside a house,” said Carolus anxiously, “it gives to anyone curious enough to enquire the information that the householder is selling gold to you. As the two old women did a few days before they were murdered.”

  “You know very well that must have been a coincidence.”

  “It is possible. But that doesn’t change its significance now.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr Deene. I just mind my own business. I don’t want anything to do with murders. Mine’s a nice quiet little business.”

  “So is murder, Mr Ebony. Good-day.”

  Carolus was a good driver and ran out of London as fast as safety permitted. He did not speak and Priggley seemed a little impressed by his grim silence.

  “Did you really mean that, about danger?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “You think the man who killed Sophia Carew and old Mrs Westmacott will, as they say, strike again?”

  “I am fairly sure that there will be an attempt on the life of Mrs Bickley.”

  “But why, for heaven’s sake? You say he’s not a maniac?”

  “I have told a number of people connected with the case that I don’t think the murders were the work of a maniac. I have also let it be thought that the police don’t.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Get back to Buddington as quickly as possible,” said Carolus, accelerating on a piece of open road.

  “And there?”

  “See Inspector John Moore.”

  But John Moore was not encouraging.

  “I know you have ingenious ideas, Carolus, but this time you seem to be stretching it. You ask me to believe that because Mrs Bickley sold some old gold to Ebony someone is going to try to strangle her.”

  “I said it was possible.”

  “But you don’t tell me why.”

  “Can’t you be satisfied with the fact that both the other women were killed after selling gold to this man?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Carolus.”

  “You told me it was the only link connecting the two households.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “No. In a small town like this you couldn’t possibly have such mutually exclusive divisions. I can tell you several ways in which there was confusion. Dante Westmacott is a friend of a farmer called Raydell who is an acquaintance of Charles Carew. Raydell’s housekeeper knew Mrs Westmacott before she was married and is a beneficiary in her will. Dante Westmacott was well acquainted with the Baxeters and had met Sophia Carew in their house. See what I mean?”

  “Yes. But it only weakens your case about Ebony.”

  “Perhaps. But I am quite serious, John, in asking you to take precautions for Mrs Bickley.”

  “I should have to know a great deal more than you tell me.”

  “Are you making progress, John?”

  “I have to admit we’re not. A small point I forgot to tell you is that the upholstery of Sophia Carew’s car has been badly ripped. But there’s nothing concrete to go on. The case remains mysterious because of the two murders. As I told you right at the beginni
ng I believe I could solve either one, but two are baffling. They make one introduce the most fantastic theories. A young assistant of mine calculates that on the facts we have there are no less than six possible lines of solution, discounting such complications as suspects. He puts them down like this, though not in order of probability:

  A maniac whose aberration is homicidal, who has an obsession with elderly women.

  A murderer who had motives, unknown to us, for both murders.

  Two separate murderers working independently, one of whom, by a freak of chance, saw the first murder and made the second look like it.

  Two murderers working independently, and an outsider who made their murders appear to resemble one another, in other words who adorned both corpses with lilies.

  Two murderers working in collaboration, who agreed to make their crimes look alike.

  The two women murdered together at Rossetti Lodge at the same time, the apparent difference in time accounted for by the fact that Mrs Westmacott’s body remained in a warm room while Miss Carew’s was left in the open.’ ”

  “I could add several more to those,” said Carolus gravely.

  “It’s quite preposterous. Those are only basic possibilities. When it comes to suspects, about the only thing we know is that the murderer of Miss Carew probably didn’t wear size eight shoes.”

  “Have you checked on shoe sizes?”

  “Yes, for almost every man even remotely connected with the case. Want to know them?”

  “Please.”

  “There are none size seven. Size eights are worn by Ebony, Charles Carew, Colonel Baxeter and Gabriel Westmacott. Size nines Raydell, Gilling, Wright, Bickley, Ben Johnson. Size ten Dante Westmacott and Thickett. Helpful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “As a matter of fact those shoes which were found, if they indicate anything at all, seem to me to suggest a woman as the murderer of Miss Carew. There’s nothing physically impossible about that.”

  “Not if it was a woman of Mrs Baxeter’s size and strength.”

  “Didn’t need to be. Any woman of normal physique under, say, fifty could have done it. What else have we got? Two lilies stolen from a front garden in Station Road on the night of the murders and a lily found on each corpse. What’s the good of that?”