The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Yes, but that’s the whole point. That’s exactly what was intended. You see, if Lynn really is innocent, this getting him to such a place, where the chances were a million to one against anyone seeing him, was obviously very carefully planned; and the man who rung him up and said he was Eccles was the real murderer.”

  “Yes, I quite see that. No doubt that is exactly what did happen. But it hasn’t been possible to check that telephone message to his club, or find out where it came from?”

  Mouse shook his head glumly. “No. I thought of that myself, but apparently they keep no record of local calls; and the solicitors found out that none of the operators had listened in to any of that particular conversation. So far as I can see, the only thing we can get from that call is Lynn’s description of the man’s voice. He says it was low, educated, and quite pleasant, and that he spoke quite like Eccles actually used to, only more so, with a slow drawl; almost an exaggerated version of what they call the Oxford manner.”

  “Well, it is certainly possible to draw some deductions from that,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick. “But it doesn’t lead us very far, does it?”

  “Not as far as a horse could canter,” admitted his companion.

  “And as a balance against the other side,” ruefully reflected Mr. Chitterwick, thinking of what his own eyes had shown him, to say nothing of such other difficult matters to explain as fingerprints on phials and the like. It was not so easy to ignore these things as Mr. Chitterwick had hoped.

  “Oh, yes, I know what we’re up against. But honestly, Chitterwick, we’ve simply got to do something about it. I’ve known Lynn for years, but apart from that Judy’s one of my sister’s oldest friends. Agatha would never forgive me if I didn’t raise heaven and earth. I’ve tried them at Scotland Yard, but, of course, their hands are tied; it’s their simple duty to prosecute. Rather awkward for the assistant commissioner in a way, because, although he didn’t know Lynn personally, he knows any amount of people who do. But they’ve none of them any doubt there about him being guilty. Rather hellish, isn’t it? I mean—for Judy. She’s so damned loyal. Never doubted him for a second.” He broke off and smoked furiously, frowning out over the lake.

  Once again the pendulum of Mr. Chitterwick’s emotions swung back. “Hellish” was not by any means too strong a word. Without doubt something must be done for that brave woman.

  “You said that Mrs. Sinclair was one of your sister’s oldest friends,” Mr. Chitterwick hesitated.

  “And mine. Known her nearly as long as I can remember. Of course, that follows. Agatha’s a good bit older than me, you see.”

  “Yes, quite. I mean, that being so, perhaps you could tell me something of Mrs. Sinclair’s marriage. I understand from the police that it is considered the Major’s strongest motive for seeking his aunt’s death.”

  “Oh, that’s nonsense. I know the idea. Miss Sinclair wanted him to marry another girl, and threatened to disinherit him and all that if he didn’t. Well, she may have wanted, and she may have threatened, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have done anything. Anybody round here will tell you that. She could bark like blazes—bay, if you like; but she hadn’t got a bite in her. Dear old thing, really.”

  “Then in that case why didn’t Major Sinclair tell her of his marriage?”

  “I don’t altogether know. Silly of him, really. He and Judy got married rather suddenly, on the spur of the moment; passing a registry office one day and just popped inside; that sort of thing. And I imagine that he funked telling Miss Sinclair at the time, and then, not having told her once, so to speak, went on not doing it. But apart from just not telling her, he made no effort to conceal the marriage from her. She could have found Judy in possession any time she’d cared to call at Queen Anne’s Gate. But that was another fad of hers. She would never go even to Lynn’s rooms when he was at Oxford, I’ve heard. Didn’t believe in maiden aunts poking their noses in bachelor nephews’ affairs. And,” added the young man with some feeling, “damned sensible too.”

  “Extremely sensible,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick, with no less feeling.

  “Mind you,” the other reverted to the more important point, “it’s only a guess of mine about Lynn funking telling her about his marriage, but I should think that’s what happened. You see, Miss Sinclair always had an eye for the main chance, and poor old Judy never had a bean. Not one. And Lynn hadn’t got many. So he must have known there’d be bound to be a bit of an uproar when he did break the sad news. Still, I’ll ask Judy herself, if you like.”

  “Perhaps it would be better. She will understand that it is not an impertinent and idle query?”

  “Good heavens, yes. Judy’s no fool.”

  “Because I really do think,” observed Mr. Chitterwick with some gravity, “that we ought to examine the question of this marriage as closely as possible; for if we could definitely show that Major Sinclair had nothing to fear from its becoming known to his aunt, then we have spiked at all events one of the prosecution’s guns.”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” said the young man promptly, “and Agatha will be able to fill in any gaps. . . .”

  Judith Pennington (as she had been born) had had an unhappy childhood. Her father died when she was only eight years old, and her mother, an incompetent manager at the best of times, was left with only a pittance, actually insufficient to support both of them. She tried to find some work suited to her very meagre capabilities, but though she was set up from time to time by more prosperous relations in turn in a dress shop, a manicure parlour, a typewriting office, and other such ventures as her fitful enthusiasms suggested, she failed in all of them. Judith, a lonely little girl, spent most of her time waiting for her mother to come home, when not pressed into service in some business-bringing capacity, if only to look pathetic in the dress shop or carry bowls of soapy water about the manicure parlour. Finally the relations tired of seeing their good money frittered away and combined to raise Mrs. Pennington’s pittance by a small allowance which just allowed the two to exist in a little Kensington flat (Mrs. Pennington held fast throughout her widowhood to only one principle: she could never possibly live anywhere else but in London). Judith was educated as cheaply as possible and grew up as unlike her mother as two human beings could well be.

  It was in the dress shop, the first of the ventures, that Mrs. Pennington’s brilliant idea of utilizing her small daughter to emphasize the pathos of the situation met with its reward. The mother of Agatha and Mouse, who had known Mrs. Pennington in her more socially presentable days, called at the shop as in duty bound to help an unfortunate friend, and there saw Judith, a small dark child with an air of aloof misery, sitting on a chair in an obscure corner, and was so touched that she carried her off the next week to her place in the country for a long stay. Actually the stay lengthened into two months, at the end of which Judith admitted gravely to her hostess that she had never been so happy in her life and expressed the candid hope that she might be asked to come again soon.

  She was asked again soon, for the experiment had proved a success not only from Judith’s point of view, but from that of her hostess as well. There was such a disparity of age between her own two children (nearly seven years) that Mouse as a little boy of six was in danger of becoming a lonely child himself, with only a maturing young woman of thirteen to rely on for companionship. Judith bridged the gap. Mouse could usually be found some part in her games with Agatha, and she was quite happy to play with him alone in Agatha’s absence. The result was that Judith usually spent most of the holidays with them, and both Mouse and Agatha looked on her more or less as a part-time sister; though as they grew older she gravitated naturally more toward the latter than the former.

  This state of affairs pleased Mrs. Pennington, who thankfully relinquished this much of her responsibility and found herself for some months of the year without any domestic tie to impede the new activity of the moment; but when she w
as grown up enough to realize it fully it did not please Judith at all. Having done so, at the age of nineteen, she went out one morning and got a job as mannequin in one of the big (and cheaper) London stores. She explained to her mother that she was tired of being an object of charity all round.

  Mrs. Pennington was shocked; not so much at the idea of her daughter being a mannequin as that she should be one in such an impossible place. Social niceties appealed very strongly to Mrs. Pennington, and she could not but recognize the difference in standing between a mannequin at, say, Reville’s and one at Ponsonby & Tompkins’s. Judith, however, to whom practical values were more important than social, pointed out with reason that one cannot hope to join the mannequin staff at Reville’s without training, whereas one could at Ponsonby & Tompkins’s, as witness the fact that she had just done so. And the pay was pretty good.

  So for three whole years Judith continued to display frocks and coats that did not belong to her for the benefit of fat women who could not possibly wear them. Not all the time at Ponsonby & Tompkins’s. Mrs. Pennington was spared that enduring humiliation, at least; for although Judith never actually attained to Reville’s, she did get into Piccadilly, within a few doors of that sacred temple. And the nearer to it she got, the more money she earned. Then she gave up being a mannequin altogether and went on the stage. Contrary to the usual prophecies, she did very well there.

  During this time the visits to Mouse and Agatha, though much curtailed, did not cease altogether. At first Judith often went down for week-ends when they were in the country, and she generally spent Christmas and a good part of her annual holiday there. Changes occurred in course of time. When she was twenty-three Agatha married, and three years later Mrs. Pennington died. Judith moved from the flat in Kensington to a smaller one in a more expensive neighbourhood and went to stay with Agatha at Riversmead instead of to Agatha’s mother in Warwickshire. She now had the hundred a year which had been her mother’s own income, and wrote very charmingly to the relations who had made up the balance thanking them for what they had done for her mother and gratefully refusing in advance a similar favour for herself. Independence had become almost a fetish with her. Besides, she was earning better money now on the stage than ever and could afford it.

  It was when staying at Riversmead that she met Major Sinclair, who was staying with his aunt at Earlshaze, twenty miles away. They fell in love almost immediately, and after taking a year to make quite certain that Sinclair wanted to marry her because he loved her and not because he was sorry for her, she promised to do so. Whereupon Sinclair, a man of action, who had thoughtfully provided himself some months ago with a licence in view of such a possibility, bundled her then and there into a taxi, drove to the registrar’s, and married her out of hand before she could change her mind. That was four years ago. . . .

  And that was really all Mouse knew about it.

  “I see.” Mr. Chitterwick thanked him. “But even that doesn’t throw any further light on their reasons for keeping it from Miss Sinclair, does it? No doubt it is as you imagine, but I think it would be better, if she would really have no objection, for me to ask Mrs. Sinclair one or two questions myself.”

  “Of course,” said Mouse, relighting his pipe. “I’ll warn her. She’ll be only too glad. Show her that you’re taking the thing up properly, too.”

  “Does she—does she know my connection with—er —that other case?” asked Mr. Chitterwick diffidently.

  It seemed that she did not; it had been told to Mouse in confidence. “But of course the police will pay tremendous attention to what you tell them,” said Mouse flatteringly. “And when I realized it was you who were the chief witness against us . . .” The inference was that no greater calamity could possibly have befallen the defence.

  “Oh, no,” expostulated Mr. Chitterwick, with a deprecatory beam. “Dear me, no. You mustn’t think that, Mouse. I assure you, it isn’t so at all.” But he was so pleased with the young man’s words, and with the sincerity which certainly informed them, and so afraid that his beam might give away the fact that he was so pleased, that he got up and took it right outside the little temple, letting the sunlight play on it in the open air.

  A rustling on his left, as of some heavy body ploughing through the undergrowth, caused him to look around. The portly butler, looking like a monstrous black codfish, was progressing with measured paces along the little path through the shrubbery. He approached Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Excuse me, sir, have you seen His Grace? I understand that he came this way.”

  “His Grace?” repeated Mr. Chitterwick.

  “The Duke, sir,” said the butler patiently, as one explaining the alphabet to a backward child.

  “The Duke?” repeated Mr. Chitterwick, more backward than ever.

  Mouse emerged from the temple. “Hallo, Wilkinson. Want me?”

  “Her Grace has just rung through on the telephone. I searched the house, but had to inform her that I could not find you. She requested me to ask you if you had forgotten that you are opening the flower show at Netherton-Muchford this afternoon at 3 p.m., Your Grace.”

  “Oh, Lord, I’d forgotten all about it. Never mind, I’ll send ’em a wire. Terrible regrets and all that, but unavoidably detained on national business. Trust it will be a tremendous success. Love to the Vicar. Got a pencil, Wilkinson? I’ll scribble something out, and you can telephone it through for me.”

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t, Your Grace. But if you care to leave it to me, I will see that a suitable message is despatched.”

  “Will you? Stout man. Right-o. Thanks.”

  The butler ploughed away again, and the young man knocked out his pipe against the temple.

  “God bless my soul,” observed Mr. Chitterwick. “Are you——?”

  “It’s a bit of a bore when it comes to local flower shows,” said the young man, almost apologetically, “but really on the whole I don’t find it so bad as you might think. And my mother keeps me up to scratch, you know.”

  “I hadn’t the faintest idea,” said Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Agatha always was rotten at introductions,” sympathized the young man.

  It is noteworthy that Mr. Chitterwick’s first reaction was to think how pleased his aunt would be.

  VIII

  DASTARDLY ASSAULT ON A LADY

  When Mr. Chitterwick returned to the house for lunch it was to find the party diminished by one. The late black-and-silver aunt, and still more late knitted-silk aunt, had unobtrusively disappeared back to the haunts from which she had emerged. Mr. Chitterwick gathered that her presence at Riversmead had been to extend to Judith the consolations of kinship, and now that more solid support was forthcoming Judith had need of her no longer. Mr. Chitterwick hoped, earnestly but dubiously, that this new support would prove as solid as everyone except himself seemed to imagine.

  After the meal he drew her out on to the terrace, under the subtle pretext of examining the gloxinias, and with not a little diffidence set about questioning her regarding the concealment of her marriage from Miss Sinclair.

  Judith was quite frank with him. “I was against it from the beginning. I detest anything savouring of hole-and-corner methods. But though Lynn pretended not to be anything of the kind he really was rather afraid of his aunt.” She smiled, a little sadly, as if at some private reminiscence. “I think one often is, quite unnecessarily, of people whom one held in awe as a child, don’t you?”

  Mr. Chitterwick did, sincerely.

  “Lynn isn’t usually the laissez-faire type by any means, but in this case he certainly did procrastinate. He knew there would be a terrible row when it came out, and he simply took the line that he wasn’t going to precipitate it; he’d just wait till it came. It was an excuse, of course. He had plenty of temper when it was roused, and would stand up to anyone if the other person attacked him. But he hated beginning a quarrel. And of course, wi
th Miss Sinclair . . .”

  “And then, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick cunningly, “there was the threat of disinheritance.”

  “Oh, he never took that seriously. I know the police are trying to make a great point of it, but it was really more of a joke than anything, even between him and Miss Sinclair. She was an autocratic old woman and liked using her power, and naturally to threaten disinheritance was a good way to enforce it. But Lynn knew perfectly well that she would never make anyone her heir but himself, whatever she might say in a temper. And as for a nephew in America whom she had never set eyes on, whose father she had detested, and whose name isn’t even Sinclair——! No, it was simply that Lynn was very fond of his aunt and kept putting off the really serious quarrel that would certainly follow on her discovery of our marriage,” said Judith earnestly. “But he never tried to stop her finding out or hearing of it elsewhere.”

  “Her secretary seemed to think that Miss Sinclair was serious in her threat,” ventured Mr. Chitterwick.

  “Miss Goole?” observed Judith, not without scorn. “She couldn’t tell whether anyone were serious or not. She couldn’t see a joke, even such a bad one as that, if you held it under her nose on a toasting fork.”

  Mr. Chitterwick, who had no intention of testing the efficient Miss Goole’s capabilities in this way, hastily changed the subject. “I suppose nothing further has come to light about the missing cousin in America?”

  Mrs. Sinclair looked slightly surprised. “Yes, as a matter of fact, something has. I had a letter from Lynn’s solicitor this morning to say that he has been found and is catching the next boat.”

  “He’s coming over here?” Mr. Chitterwick felt shocked. The vultures should not foregather before the victim is actually condemned.

  Mrs. Sinclair read his look. “Oh, it’s not so bad as that. He says he’s coming over to do what he possibly can for his cousin, which is very kind of him. Apparently he must have imbibed some of the impulsive energy of his adopted country.”