The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  Moresby was exactly punctual. Mr. Chitterwick, emerging into the vestibule from an aimless tour of the under regions of the hotel, was in time to see him coming through the big swing doors at the entrance. They shook hands.

  “Now, Mr. Chitterwick, sir,” said Moresby, “let’s find a quiet corner somewhere and hear all about it.”

  Mr. Chitterwick led him to the under regions, and they ensconced themselves in an enormous reading and writing room, “for residents only.” Apparently the residents of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel did little reading or writing, for the room was empty.

  “Now, sir,” said Moresby, settling himself to listen. “Let me have the whole story again, please.”

  “You don’t think . . . ? I was very careful to ensure that the body should not be disturbed.”

  “Quite right, sir,” said the chief inspector with much heartiness. “Very proper. But we can leave all those details for the time being to the divisional inspector. What I want to hear about is this bit of evidence of yours. Something you saw, eh? Well, let’s have the whole thing, and put it in its proper place, please, sir.”

  Once again Mr. Chitterwick embarked on his story.

  He told it haltingly, for he was a kind-hearted man as well as a just one, and he neither wanted to make things awkward for the red-haired man if (as most probably was the case) he really was quite innocent, nor wished to lay undue stress on the quite excusable malignity with which that individual had favoured himself.

  Moresby, however, seized on this point at once. “You say he seemed to resent your looking at him?”

  “Well, in a way,” said Mr. Chitterwick, desperately anxious to be fair. “Or one might say, watching him. Because I really had been gazing at him quite intently. Unconsciously, of course, but positively staring. He was quite justified in resenting it. I should have resented it myself. It was most rude of me. I really don’t think one should attach too much importance to that, Chief Inspector.”

  “Very well, sir,” promised the chief inspector. “But I’ll bear it in mind.”

  “Besides,” pointed out Mr. Chitterwick for the defence, “he stopped looking at me like that after quite a short while. Stopped looking at me altogether, in fact.”

  “After he thought he’d choked you off from looking at him” agreed Moresby. “Quite so, sir. Well?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick, rather uncomfortably, “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed the same thing, Chief Inspector, but if ever there’s one thing around me which I know I ought not to look at, I find my eyes irresistibly drawn toward it. Invariably!” Mr. Chitterwick’s tone apologized for this awkward habit on the part of his eyes, but at the same time indicated that extenuating circumstances were to be found for it.

  “Same with most of us, I think, sir,” Moresby reassured him. “Anyhow, it’s lucky in this case. Because as soon as you thought he’d forgotten all about you, you started watching him again?”

  “Well, yes,” assented Mr. Chitterwick deprecatingly. “I’m afraid that is so.”

  “And what did you see then, sir?”

  Mr. Chitterwick told how the two seemed to be engaged in a violent quarrel, and then went on to recount the episode of the Hovering Hand. He did so not very willingly, because he was acutely conscious of the possibility that he was turning not merely a molehill but a mere worm-cast into a very formidable mountain; but he knew it was his duty. And by parting with the information he at any rate at the same time parted with his responsibility in the matter. The differentiation of worm-casts from mountains could be left now to the police.

  Moresby questioned him closely on the incident. Both men realized that upon it a man’s life might ultimately depend, and both were anxious to pin it down, while memory was fresh, exactly as it had happened, no more and no less, before the caterpillar could blossom out into a butterfly or shrink again into a quite insignificant grub.

  In the end it was decided that the action had certainly taken place, because Mr. Chitterwick could not possibly have imagined it; that the red-haired man’s hand had been not in the position of a hand holding a lump of sugar, but in that of a hand holding something surreptitiously concealed in the palm; and that without doubt the red-haired man had distracted the old lady’s attention first, causing her to look over her shoulder in a direction pointing right away from the table, and that she could not have seen anything the red-haired man might have done just then to her cup. Put in this way, the affair sounded even more ominous than Mr. Chitterwick had cared to think before; but he could not dispute the conclusions.

  He told Moresby how the mistaken summons to the telephone had put an end to his observations.

  The chief inspector seemed thoughtful. He rubbed his large square chin with a hand like a ham and pulled at his heavy moustache. “Um! Suppose this does turn out as we fear, Mr. Chitterwick, sir. You realize your position?”

  “Only too well,” sighed the reluctant Mr. Chitterwick.

  “You’ll be in the situation of having actually seen the murder committed. As a criminologist yourself, sir, I needn’t tell you how extraordinary that is.”

  “In a poison case,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, “I should think almost unique.”

  “Pretty well so. Direct evidence! That’s what we’re going to get from you, Mr. Chitterwick.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick unhappily.

  Moresby seemed to be positively gloating over what he was going to get from Mr. Chitterwick. “Lord, sir, what a lot of trouble you’re going to save us. No messing about with all the circumstantial stuff, proving this little thing and that little thing and all the other little things. Here you come into the box and say you saw the blessed murder actually being committed. And that’ll be that.”

  “We don’t know at all that it is murder yet, though, do we?” Mr. Chitterwick felt constrained to point out.

  Moresby ignored the suggestion. Obviously he felt it to be unworthy of the occasion. “Won’t the prosecution fall on your neck? Why, sir, you’ll be the prosecution, that’s what you’ll be.”

  “Shall I?” said Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Well,” said Moresby, “suppose we go along and have a look at the old girl?”

  No doubt, ruminated Mr. Chitterwick, as he trotted along in the chief inspector’s masterful wake like a dinghy behind a battleship, no doubt familiarity with corpses may be expected to breed a certain friendliness, but really——

  The lounge, Mr. Chitterwick was astonished to see, was still pursuing its normal function of slaking London’s thirst. The tea contingent was beginning to arrive, and the place was filling up with its usual rapidity. Not one of the lipsticked young women, dowdy matrons from Surbiton, or glistening rounders had the faintest inkling that behind those decorative screens in the middle was a recently and very horribly dead body; and not knowing, they cared less. Shrill laughter and the clashing of china sounded on all sides just as usual; the incomers ordered their teas, and the outgoers paid for what they had had. Like its manager, more than a mere corpse was needed to upset the routine of the Piccadilly Palace lounge. After all, dividends must be paid.

  Scarcely an eye followed Moresby and Mr. Chitterwick as they disappeared into the screened space spared to death.

  It appeared that the divisional inspector had become perturbed about Mr. Chitterwick’s absence. He greeted him, on the doctor’s introduction, with relief more than tinged with exasperation. He was going on to be somewhat professional when Moresby cut him short.

  “That’s all right, Parker. Mr. Chitterwick’s been talking to me.”

  The divisional inspector, whose feelings about Mr. Chitterwick had blinded him to the identity of that gentleman’s companion, swung round in surprise. “Mr. Moresby! Why, I didn’t expect to see you, sir.”

  “Mr. Chitterwick gave me a ring,” Moresby explained easily. “So I came along to help him out, as you might
say.” Which was nothing less than the truth, but by no means the whole truth. Chief inspectors do not necessarily tell the whole truth to divisional inspectors any more than Sherlock Holmeses do to Watsons.

  “Oh!” The divisional inspector turned back to Mr. Chitterwick, but this time with respect. “You know Mr. Moresby, then, sir?”

  “Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick beamed, noting the respect with relief. “As it happens, I do.”

  “Then that’s all right. Beginning to think you’d given us the slip, I was. You’d be surprised how often witnesses do that before we can get their names and addresses. Seem to think there’s something to be ashamed of, being mixed up with a case, they do.”

  “You won’t find Mr. Chitterwick that sort of gentleman,” said Moresby briskly. “Well, Parker, what do you make of it, eh?”

  Parker looked surprised. “Make of it, Mr. Moresby? Well, it’s plain enough, isn’t it?”

  “What’s plain enough?”

  Parker looked still more surprised. “Why, suicide.”

  “Um!” Moresby stroked his chin and contemplated the body. “Haven’t moved the body yet, have you?”

  “No, sir. I’ve been taking the doctor’s statement—and waiting to take this gentleman’s,” he added, with a last reproachful glance in the direction of Mr. Chitterwick.

  Moresby turned to the doctor. “And what’s your verdict, sir?”

  “Why, plain as a pikestaff. There’s the phial still in her hand. Suicide!”

  “That’s a matter for us to decide,” Moresby retorted, but with a geniality which almost took the rebuke from his words. “I meant, your verdict as to the cause of death?”

  “Equally obvious,” replied the doctor, unabashed. He was a very young doctor and not at all in the habit of being abashed. “Prussic acid. You can smell it from here.”

  “Um!” said Moresby unhelpfully, but this time he implied no disagreement. “I want that phial,” he added softly.

  “I’ll get it for you,” said the doctor. “Rigor hasn’t set in yet.”

  Moresby stepped forward hastily. “Thank you, sir, I think I’d rather get it myself.” He stood for a moment intently examining the dead hand, but made no effort to unclasp the fingers. “On second thoughts, I’ll have a photograph of it first. Got a man with you, Parker?”

  Parker nodded. “He’s in the office.” It was understood that policemen in uniform could not be left about the public parts of the Piccadilly Palace. Policemen are very bad for dividends.

  “Tell him to telephone to the Yard and ask them to send Grey along at once, with his camera. Oh, and I think we’d better have Matthews, too.”

  Mr. Chitterwick watched the divisional inspector’s eyebrows with interest. They rose until they almost disappeared into his hair. “Good Lord, sir, you don’t think there—there’s any hanky-panky here, do you?” Matthews was the fingerprint expert, in charge of that department at Scotland Yard, though Mr. Chitterwick did not know that.

  Moresby eyed his subordinate. “Well—take a look at that hand before you go, Parker.”

  Parker took a long look. “Whew!” he said.

  “Those fingers were never conscious when they took hold of that phial,” said Moresby. “Or, rather, when they didn’t take hold of it.”

  “That’s a fact,” said Parker, and went soberly.

  Left alone with Moresby Mr. Chitterwick ventured to take a long look at the hand too.

  The fingers were curled only loosely about the shape of the phial, which rested on them, but was not clasped by them. “Dear me, dear me!” said Mr. Chitterwick, much distressed.

  The doctor took a long look too. “That’s right enough, Chief Inspector,” he confirmed. “I ought to have spotted it. I’d lay any odds that she was already unconscious when that phial was put into her hand. I say, this is a bit thick. Murder, eh? Rigged to look like suicide?”

  “That’ll be for the coroner’s jury to say, sir,” Moresby genially rebuked him again. “In the meantime it’s our business to collect all the evidence available. The inspector’s got your statement, sir, hasn’t he? I take it we can get hold of you here whenever we happen to want you?”

  “In other words, you don’t want me now,” laughed the doctor. “Yes, that’s so. All right; I’ll go. I suppose you’ll want an autopsy, as it’s a poison case?”

  “And that’s for the coroner to say, too,” said Moresby. “But no doubt you’re right, sir. If you want to attend we’ll raise no objection.”

  “Yes, I’d like to. This is the first case of murder I’ve come across. By the way, my room number is 724 if you want me at any time. I’ve got a telephone in it, of course.”

  He went.

  Mr. Chitterwick, who strongly disliked things having to be hinted to him, prepared to follow him.

  “No need for you to go, Mr. Chitterwick,” said Moresby. “That is, unless you want to.”

  “I should like to stay very much,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gratitude. “I find this all remarkably interesting.” He looked somewhat apologetically toward the dead woman, as if to excuse himself for finding interest in the mere circumstances of her death. “That is, if I shan’t be in the way?”

  “That’s all right, sir; if you’ll just keep out of our path while the photographs and so on are being taken. To tell you the truth, we owe you something for coming forward so promptly with that bit of evidence of yours.”

  “You’re quite sure it is murder, then?” said Mr. Chitterwick, not quite certain what he was hoping himself.

  “It’s beginning to look uncommonly like it,” Moresby said guardedly.

  “And if I hadn’t voiced my suspicions, the—the murderer would have escaped?”

  “Well, sir, I don’t know that I’d say that. Parker’s no fool or he wouldn’t be where he is; and he’d have been bound to spot one thing sooner or later, even if he missed the point about the phial for the time being. They say every murderer makes some bad mistake. Can you see what your red-haired friend’s is?”

  Mr. Chitterwick looked at the body, the table, the floor, and the chairs, and shook his head. “No, I must confess I can’t.”

  “Why,” said Moresby with much satisfaction, “look at her left hand. Not the one holding the phial—the other. She’s got her glove on, hasn’t she? But not on the other hand. Now look at her handbag and the other glove. Not on the table, you see, nor in her lap; on the floor. Don’t you see what that means?”

  “Oh!” Mr. Chitterwick looked intelligent. “Yes, I think I do. You mean, she was getting ready to go?”

  “That’s it, sir. Getting ready to go, she was. Well, one doesn’t begin getting ready to go before swallowing a quick-acting poison like prussic acid, does one? Not if one’s committing suicide, one doesn’t. I think, sir, that about clinches it, eh?”

  “What do you deduce then, Chief Inspector?” nodded Mr. Chitterwick solemnly.

  “Well, it looks to me as if your red-haired friend was getting a bit impatient. He’d salted the coffee, and the old lady wouldn’t drink it. And he was anxious to make his getaway. So like most murderers, sir, he overreaches himself a bit. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Time we were going. Drink up your coffee.’ But instead of drinking up her coffee she starts putting her things on first. Eh? How’s that?”

  “Admirable,” said Mr. Chitterwick. “That is no doubt just what happened. And then, of course, he would wait for the requisite minute or less after she had drunk, and then hurry away as soon as the signs of coma set in.”

  “You can depend on it, sir,” said the chief inspector with confidence, “that that’s exactly what did happen.”

  They stood for a moment in silence, reconstructing those last few moments.

  “There’s just one thing that rather puzzles me,” said Mr. Chitterwick timidly. “Why is there only one coffee cup? What has become of his?”


  “You’re sure he had some, sir, are you?”

  Mr. Chitterwick was quite sure.

  “Then I expect he got rid of it. Told the waitress to clear it. After all, sir, that’d be obvious, wouldn’t it? Two coffee cups mean two people, and the police would be wondering who the second person was. Why, he’d have to get rid of his own cup if no awkward questions were to be asked.

  “Of course he would. How very stupid of me.” Mr. Chitterwick was evidently ashamed of his own obtuseness. “I ought to have realized that.”

  Moresby tactfully passed over his companion’s foolishness. After all, amateurs were amateurs, and what could you expect? “Still, that’s a point we can settle easily enough, and perhaps the sooner the better. Will you wait here, sir, and not let any unauthorized person inside? I’m going to get hold of the waitress who served them while she’ll still remember.”

  Mr. Chitterwick was left in sole, and rather tremulous, charge.

  Moresby was not away long. He nodded with a good deal of satisfaction as he reappeared.

  “That’s quite correct, sir. The girl remembers distinctly. They had two cups of coffee, as you said, and not long after your red-haired friend beckoned her over and gave her his own empty cup. Sort of absent-mindedly, she said. The old lady’s cup wasn’t empty.”

  “Exactly as you foretold,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick in congratulation.

  The chief inspector accepted Mr. Chitterwick’s congratulation with proper modesty, but at the same time managed to convey the idea that, after all, professionals were professionals, so what would you expect? “I thought that was about how it’d turn out, sir. Sensible girl, luckily. Seems to have got her wits about her. By the way, she’ll be able to confirm your identification of the man, of course.”

  “You—you think you’ll be able to arrest him, then?”

  The chief inspector laughed heartily, and the look of satisfaction on his face seemed to deepen. “Put my hand on him, you mean? Lord, sir, I don’t expect much difficulty there. I fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if I could put my hand on him this very minute.”

  “Eh?” said Mr. Chitterwick, startled.