Murder at the Manor

by Martin Edwards

  Hansell was an unemployed workman turned tramp, and had been arrested in a Lincott public-house after trying to pawn a watch which an alert shopman recognized as Sir George’s. At first Hansell gave the usual yarn about having found the watch, but after a severe questioning at the police station he told a much more extraordinary story. On the previous Saturday, he said, about a quarter past eight in the evening, he had been trespassing in the woods belonging to the Towers estate. Finding the little hut he had pushed open the door and had there, to his great alarm and astonishment, come across the dead body of a man. At first he thought of going for help immediately, but as he felt that his own position might be thought rather questionable, he had contented himself in the end with rifling the pockets and decamping. He admitted having taken some papers and a wallet, which he had since destroyed, except for a few treasury notes it had contained. He had also taken the watch.

  But at 8:15 p.m., as the police detectives did not fail to point out, Sir George had been broadcasting a talk from the B.B.C. studio in London. How, then, could he have been found sixty miles away, dead, at the same hour? Obviously Hansell must be a great liar.

  He was brought before the local magistrates and speedily committed for trial at the assizes. Meanwhile Scarsdale, in the midst of well-simulated grief at the loss of a respected employer, was thinking hard. The arrest of Hansell had given him a shock at first, but he was not long in finding a way of fitting it into his plan. Indeed, now that the suicide theory was all out of focus, Scarsdale himself thought fit to make the discovery about the missing bonds, and was inclined to agree with the police when they suggested that the bonds might have been among the papers that Hansell had stolen from Sir George’s pockets and afterwards destroyed.

  The trial of Hansell came on in due course. He pleaded “Not Guilty,” but his story sounded pretty thin, and was not improved by the fact that he still insisted that he had found the body at 8:15 p.m. He had heard the Lincott church clock chime the quarter, he said, and no amount of cross-examination could shake him. Moreover, the prosecution were able to prove that his fingerprints were on the automatic pistol. Hansell explained this by saying that he had found the weapon lying beside the body and had picked it up; but the story was unconvincing. Was it not more likely that Sir George had been taking the short cut home from Lincott station (as he often did), that he had been attacked by Hansell and had drawn his automatic (which he often carried) to defend himself, that Hansell had wrested it from him, and had shot him with it, and had afterwards dragged the body into the shed and, in sheer panic, left the telltale weapon behind?

  Defending counsel could only offer the alternative theory of suicide, which, in the case of so well-respected a personage as Sir George, seemed a breach of taste as well as a straining of probability. As for Hansell, he must, whatever he said, have mistaken the time of his visit to the hut. Neither of these suggestions appealed to judge and jury, and it was not surprising that Hansell was found guilty and sentenced to death. This was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life.

  Scarsdale, with the trial over and everything settling down, had now only the tail end of his plan to put into cautious execution. He would wait, he had decided, for twelve months (to avoid any semblance of flight), and then go abroad, probably to the Argentine, taking with him the bonds. After a year or two in Buenos Aires he would doubtless have formed a sufficiently intimate connection with some banker or stockbroker to enable him to begin disposing of the booty.

  It has already been noted that the verdict of “murder” instead of “suicide” did not at first disturb the vast and almost terrifying equanimity of Scarsdale. What did trouble him, however, as time passed and the death of Sir George became history, was the gradually invading consciousness that the only thing that had saved him from the dock, and possibly from the gallows, was not his precious plan at all, but sheer luck! For if Hansell had reported the finding of the body without delay, the faked alibi of the broadcast would have been discovered. Scarsdale had been saved, then, not by the flawlessness of his own brainwork but by a casual circumstance entirely outside of his control!

  It was an unwelcome conclusion to reach, partly because it robbed him of pride in achievement, but chiefly because it laid him open to disquieting thoughts of the future.

  During the year of waiting in England he lived at Kew, renting a house near the river and living on his savings while he devoted himself to writing a book on his favourite subject—criminology. It passed the time; besides which, he had hopes that it would eventually establish his reputation.

  He received several minor shocks during this period. One happened when an acquaintance named Lindsey accosted him suddenly at his club (and apropos of nothing at all): “You know, Scarsdale, you’re awfully like old Dunster in appearance. Did you ever realize that? I’m sure you could easily have passed for him during his lifetime with the help of a false moustache and those goggles of his! Especially, too, if you could have managed that rather shrill way of talking he had. And you are a bit of an actor-chap, aren’t you? Didn’t you once play in something at Oxford?”

  Scarsdale wondered whether his face were turning fiery red or ashen pale. He managed to laugh, and an hour or so later reached the satisfying conclusion that it had all been pure chance—nothing but that. But it was upsetting, all the same, and it was about this time that he began the habit of carrying a small automatic pistol about with him wherever he went. He would not be taken alive.

  Just about a month before the year was up, Lindsey telephoned him with immense cheerfulness one morning. “Oh, hullo, Scarsdale. I’m in a job now, and you’ll never guess where. It’s in the B.B.C.…” Several minutes of excited chatter, and then: “By the way, how would you like to do a short talk on Crimes and Criminals, or something of the sort? We’re getting up a series here and your name occurred to me—you’ve always been keen on the subject, haven’t you? What about June 11th, say?”

  Scarsdale had hoped to be in Buenos Aires by that date, but he could not very well say so, and some kind of caution urged him not to make excuses. Besides, he could not help being slightly thrilled at the prospect of making a whole country listen to his views on crime and criminals. He told Lindsey that the date would suit him quite well.

  During the eight weeks’ interval, however, there came to him once or twice the faintest possible misgiving—soon banished, but leaving nevertheless a flavour of anxiety behind.

  On the evening of June 11th he did not feel at his best as he set out for Savoy Hill. He was due to speak from 8 p.m. until 8:20, and he could not escape the recollection of the last time he had entered the building. It was odd, perhaps, that the very same announcer should be welcoming him again now, though it was quite natural, no doubt, that the announcer, knowing that Scarsdale had been Sir George’s secretary should begin to chat about the deceased gentleman. “Awfully sad business that was,” commented the familiar dulcet tones. “I talked to him that very evening just as I’m talking to you now. Amazing that he should have been so near his tragic end—indeed, I often wonder if he had any premonition of it himself, because he seemed just slightly uneasy in manner.”

  “Did he?” said Scarsdale.

  “Of course it may have been my imagination. I was only comparing him with other times I’d heard him speak—at company meetings. Fortunately, I’d already sold all my Anglo-Oceanics. Queer he should have been carrying all those bonds about with him—forty thousand pounds’ worth of them, wasn’t it?”

  “It was never absolutely proved.”

  “But bearer bonds, weren’t they? Doesn’t that mean that anybody who got hold of them could raise money on them?”

  “More or less,” answered Scarsdale absently. He had suddenly begun to feel troubled. He wished he had not arrived early enough for this chat.

  By 7:55 the announcer had reached the stage of offering a few general tips about broadcasting. “This is your first experience
of the microphone, I understand, Mr. Scarsdale?”

  Scarsdale nodded.

  “Curious—I thought I recognized your face. Or perhaps you’re very like someone else…. However, you’ll soon get over mike-fright, even if you do have a touch of it at first. The chief point to remember is, never to speak too fast or in a very high-pitched voice. But then, you don’t, as a matter of fact, do you?”

  Scarsdale was a trifle pale. “I don’t think so,” he murmured.

  Five minutes later he sat at the little desk before the microphone, with the green-shaded lamp before him. He was certainly nervous, and beyond his nervousness, strangely uneasy in a deeper sense. It was peculiar; he hadn’t been like it before. As he sat down, his foot caught in the flex that connected the lamp with the wallplug; the lamp went out, but it did not matter; the globes overhead were sufficient to see by. He waited for the red light to deliver its signal, indicating that he had been properly introduced to his unseen audience; then he began to read his manuscript.

  But all the time he was reading, he was thinking and pondering subconsciously…he had been there before…the announcer had thought so, too…the announcer had seen and heard Sir George in the flesh at company meetings…the announcer had told him he must avoid a high-pitched voice…bearer bonds…this was the very same studio—and the same time also—eight o’clock…and it was Lindsey who had fixed up his talk, and Lindsey who had once commented on his likeness to Sir George.…

  Suddenly the idea burst over him in full force, monstrous, all-conquering: this was all a plant—engineered jointly by Lindsey and the B.B.C.—with perhaps Scotland Yard in the discreet background—they were testing him, and by the very latest psychological methods, as expounded by the great French criminologists…. They guessed the truth and were probing subtly—it was their perfect plan seeking to undermine his…

  At that moment, while Scarsdale’s eyes and voice were reading automatically, the announcer stole into the room and silently replaced the lamp-plug in the wall-socket. The green light blazed suddenly into Scarsdale’s face as the intruder, in a whisper too soft to be audible to the microphone, murmured: “Pulled it off, didn’t you? I thought that’s what must have happened.…”

  Scarsdale’s broadcast talk on Crimes and Criminals will never, it is safe to say, be forgotten in the history of the radio. Most listeners, as the talk progressed, must have been aware of a growing tension in the speaker’s delivery—a tension ill-suited both to matter and theme. But it is certain that no listener remained unthrilled when, about sixteen minutes past eight, Scarsdale exclaimed, in a voice vibrating with excitement: “And here, if I may be permitted, I will interpose an example of what I consider to be the really perfect, undetectable crime…I myself murdered Sir George Winthrop-Dunster.…”

  At this point the loud-speakers in some hundreds of thousands of homes delivered themselves of a mysterious crashing sound, followed by a long silence until 8:35, when a familiar Oxford accent expressed regret for the delay and gave out, without further comment, the continuation of the evening’s programme.

  In the morning, however, the newspapers were less reticent. Scarsdale, it appeared, had made history by being the first person actually to commit suicide before the microphone. He had shot himself.

  The inquest was held the following day and attracted great attention. The announcer was very gentle and soothing in giving evidence—almost as if he were reading an S.O.S. “It seemed to me,” he said, “that Mr. Scarsdale was rather upset about something when he arrived at the studio. He was a few minutes early and we chatted together. We talked a little about Sir George Winthrop-Dunster. I concluded that Mr. Scarsdale was probably nervous, as it was his first broadcast. About halfway through the talk I noticed that the lamp over his desk had gone out—he must have caught his foot in the flex and pulled the plug away. I went in to put it right for him and noticed then that he wasn’t looking at all well. He was very pale, and he stared at me in a rather queer way when I mentioned something about the light. A few minutes later I had to put up the signal warning him not to talk in such a high-pitched voice because the sound wasn’t coming through properly. The next I heard was his extraordinary statement about—er—Sir George Winthrop-Dunster. Of course I rushed to cut off the microphone immediately, but before I could do so I heard the shot.…”

  The verdict was naturally one of “Suicide during temporary insanity.”

  Even the last of Scarsdale’s plans went astray. Instead of being fearfully acknowledged as the perpetrator of the world’s perfect murder, he was dismissed as that familiar and rather troublesome type—the neurotic person who confesses to a crime of which he is quite obviously innocent. “Poor Scarsdale,” said Inspector Deane, in a special interview for one of the Sunday papers, “had been deeply distressed by the tragic death of his employer, and that, coupled with his interest in criminology (I understand he was writing a book on the subject), had combined to unhinge his mind.…We often get similar confessions during well-known murder trials, and as a rule, as on this occasion, we can spot them at a glance.” Answering a further question, Inspector Deane remarked: “As a matter of fact, Scarsdale wasn’t within fifty miles of Lincott during the whole of the time that the crime could possibly have been committed. We know that, because in the ordinary course of police routine we had to check up his movements.…Poor fellow, we all liked him. He helped us a good deal in our work though it was clear all the time that he was feeling things badly.”

  Just one point remains—about those bonds. If ever it should be discovered that Scarsdale had had in his possession a small fortune in South American bearer certificates, a certain measure of suspicion would inevitably be cast upon him—albeit posthumously. But will such a discovery be made? Scarsdale had put them in a tin box and had buried the box three feet deep in the back garden of the house he rented at Kew; and who, pray, is ever likely to dig them up?

  The Same to Us

  Margery Allingham

  Margery Allingham (1904–1966) came from literary stock and published her first novel whilst still a teenager. Her most famous character, Albert Campion, had a low-key role in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), but soon moved to centre stage. Originally a rather mysterious scoundrel, he (like Raffles long before) developed into a more appealing character; he remained enigmatic, however, and Allingham amused herself by dropping hints that he was connected to the royal family.

  Allingham was a talented writer who became increasingly keen to shake off the constraints of the conventional whodunit. Some of her experiments were more successful than others, but the quality of her best work is such that her reputation endures to this day, and the Margery Allingham Society is thriving. This story, first published as long ago as 1934, makes a telling point.

  ***

  It was particularly unfortunate for Mrs Christopher Molesworth that she should have had burglars on the Sunday night of what was, perhaps, the crowningly triumphant week-end of her career as a hostess.

  As a hostess Mrs Molesworth was a connoisseur. She chose her guests with a nice discrimination, disdaining everything but the most rare. Mere notoriety was no passport to Molesworth Court.

  Nor did mere friendship obtain many crumbs from the Molesworth table, though the ability to please and do one’s piece might possibly earn one a bed when the lion of the hour promised to be dull, uncomfortable and liable to be bored.

  That was how young Petterboy came to be there at the great week-end. He was diplomatic, presentable, near enough a teetotaller to be absolutely trustworthy, even at the end of the evening, and he spoke a little Chinese.

  This last accomplishment had done him but little good before, save with very young girls at parties, who relieved their discomfort at having no conversation by persuading him to tell them how to ask for their baggage to be taken ashore at Hong Kong, or to ascertain the way to the bathroom at a Peking hotel.

  However, now the acco
mplishment was really useful, for it obtained for him an invitation to Mrs Molesworth’s greatest week-end party.

  This party was so select that it numbered but six all told. There were the Molesworths themselves–Christopher Molesworth was an M.P., rode to hounds, and backed up his wife in much the same way as a decent black frame backs up a coloured print.

  Then there was Petterboy himself, the Feison brothers, who looked so restful and talked only if necessary, and finally the guest of all time, the gem of a magnificent collection, the catch of a lifetime, Dr Koo Fin, the Chinese scientist himself–Dr Koo Fin, the Einstein of the East, the man with the Theory. After quitting his native Peking he had only left his house in New England on one memorable occasion when he delivered a lecture in Washington to an audience which was unable to comprehend a word. His works were translated but since they were largely concerned with higher mathematics the task was comparatively simple.

  Mrs Molesworth had every reason to congratulate herself on her capture. ‘The Chinese Einstein’, as the newspapers had nicknamed him, was hardly a social bird. His shyness was proverbial, as was also his dislike and mistrust of women. It was this last foible which accounted for the absence of femininity at Mrs Molesworth’s party. Her own presence was unavoidable, of course, but she wore her severest gowns, and took a mental vow to speak as little as necessary. It is quite conceivable that had Mrs Molesworth been able to change her sex she would have done so nobly for that week-end alone.

  She had met the sage at a very select supper party after his only lecture in London. It was the same lecture which had thrown Washington into a state of bewilderment. Since Dr Koo Fin arrived he had been photographed more often than any film star. His name and his round Chinese face were better known than those of the principals in the latest cause célèbre, and already television comedians referred to his great objectivity theory in their patter.