The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  Mouse had gone dead white. “My God,” he whispered, “you don’t mean—you can’t mean—–”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick in a low voice, looking the other way. “Yes. Judith Sinclair.”

  XV

  ENVOY

  Lady Milborne pushed the olives toward Mr. Chitterwick and consulted with the waiter about the wine. Mr. Chitterwick ate an olive with an attempt at nonchalance and sipped his cocktail. He felt like a man who has wandered by mistake into the feminine portion of a Turkish bath and is hoping desperately that nobody will notice him before he can escape.

  “You haven’t had dinner in a women’s club before, Mr. Chitterwick?” Lady Milborne smiled, the matter of the wine satisfactorily settled.

  “Er—no,” Mr. Chitterwick confessed. “No, I haven’t.” From his expression one gathered that he hoped never to do so again.

  “They don’t do one so badly here really, considering,” said Lady Milborne. “You’ll have another cocktail?”

  “No, thank you,” said Mr. Chitterwick. “No, really, thank you.”

  Lady Milborne beckoned to the waiter. “Two more side cars, please. I want another,” she added to Mr. Chitterwick with her most dazzling smile, “and I hate drinking alone. You don’t really mind, do you?” If a combination of cocktails and her own smile could put Mr. Chitterwick at ease, then Lady Milborne was going to put him.

  “Oh, well,” said Mr. Chitterwick, melting already.

  Lady Milborne waited until the second cocktail should have done its work. “And now,” she said, “I want to hear all about it. Everything!”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick vaguely. “Yes, of course. Er—Mouse is quite all right, you said?”

  “Yes, I think so, now. Judy’s death was a terrible shock to him, of course, but he realizes that it was much better than—well, arrest and all that. I suppose she would certainly have been convicted?”

  “With Benson’s evidence, inevitably.”

  “And what will happen to him?”

  “A severe sentence, undoubtedly. He was an accessory after the fact, you see.”

  Lady Milborne sighed. “I can hardly realize it even now, Mr. Chitterwick!”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m quite sure you had something to do with Judy poisoning herself and leaving that confession. Didn’t you?

  Mr. Chitterwick looked highly uncomfortable. “Really, Lady Milborne—–”

  “If it’s confidential I won’t tell anyone. What did you do, Mr. Chitterwick?”

  “I . . . H’m! Well, it is confidential, but perhaps . . . After I had spoken with Benson, you see, and made sure (as I imagined would be the case) that he was only anxious to save his own skin at the expense of Mrs. Sinclair’s, I got rid of Mouse on some pretext and went up to the house, where I telephoned through to Chiswick. Mrs. Sinclair was still there, and I told her quite bluntly what had happened, that I had no alternative but to put the matter in the hands of the police, but that I proposed to delay doing so until I had returned to London, which would not be for at least three hours. And I must admit,” said Mr. Chitterwick with conscious guilt, “that I hinted very plainly that, as conviction would be inevitable and escape was impossible, she might care to consider some easier way out. She was a good gambler and accepted defeat.” Mr. Chitterwick sighed, remembering that terrible conversation and the jaunty courage with which the woman at the other end of the line received what had amounted to her own death sentence. Judith Sinclair may have been a callous woman, but she was certainly a brave one.

  “As for the confession, I hinted also that she might care to leave that behind her in return for the quite illegal concession I was making her, and she agreed at once. She seemed to bear no animosity against anyone, certainly not against her husband, and not even against Benson. I remember she remarked that it was a mistake to rely on a broken reed, but the trouble was that one never knew that the reed was broken until one had leaned. She must have gone straight back to Queen Anne’s Gate, written out the confession taking all responsibility for the murder, and swallowed the prussic acid.”

  “The remainder of the same lot that she’d got for Miss Sinclair,” said Lady Milborne solemnly. “That’s tragic irony, if you like. And then you went to Scotland Yard. What did they say to you?”

  “Not much, at first.” Mr. Chitterwick was unable to repress a smile at the memory of Moresby’s bantering incredulity as he had begun to unfold his tale, turning to open-mouthed amazement as Mr. Chitterwick produced proofs of his case, and culminating in stern officialism when Greggs and Mouse brought in their prisoner to tell his own version. “But afterward they were very kind,” added Mr. Chitterwick, remembering further first Moresby’s ungrudging commendation afterward, and then the warm words of the assistant commissioner himself.

  “And they let Lynn go at once?”

  “As soon as the formalities could be pushed through. Er—I’ve hardly seen him since. How is he?” Major Sinclair had thanked Mr. Chitterwick with stiff correctness for the efforts he had made on his behalf and at the same time contrived to intimate that he would have been a good deal more grateful if the Chitterwick nose had never been pushed into the affair at all.

  “Oh, he’ll get over it in time, no doubt. One always does. But naturally he’s still terribly cut up. He adored Judy, you know. If it wasn’t for the confession he’d refuse to believe in her guilt for a moment. But I’m not at all sure,” added Lady Milborne thoughtfully, “that he didn’t suspect the truth all the time, you know.”

  “And kept silent for his wife’s sake,” meditated Mr. Chitterwick. “He must be a noble fellow.”

  “Yes, Lynn’s a very good sort.”

  The hors d’oeuvres disappeared, and a sole meuniere took their place. The waiter poured out the Liebfraumilch.

  “But what I can’t understand,” Lady Milborne resumed, “is Judy herself. We were all so fond of her, and yet she must have been a devil really. How did she take us all in?”

  “She was a born actress,” replied Mr. Chitterwick promptly. “She didn’t need a stage to display her talents, though she did use one at one time. Her whole life must have been spent in acting a part—the character in which she wished her friends to see her. In reality she was a hard, ruthless woman, with an ingrained dread of poverty, extravagant tastes, complete self-confidence, and great ambition.”

  “Now, how on earth do you know all that?” asked Lady Milborne, with proper admiration.

  Mr. Chitterwick considered for a moment. “I think it began in her childhood. The experience of poverty she had had then was enough to make her dread it for the rest of her life. Similarly the luxury she saw surrounding her when staying with you was enough to make her crave similar conditions for herself. No doubt she thought she had secured them when Major Sinclair, not too well off himself, but the heir of a wealthy old woman, asked her to marry him, though she kept even him waiting a year in case anything better turned up. But the wealthy old woman didn’t die, and the Major’s income only just sufficed to keep two; if anything, I daresay, she found herself even more hard put to it to keep up appearances in that position than when she was single. And, moreover, there was always the fear in the background that Miss Sinclair would disapprove of her nephew’s marriage to the extent of altering her will.”

  “And that brought her to murder, to make sure of it once and for all?”

  “Not that alone. There was another motive, I think.”

  “What?

  Mr. Chitterwick looked a little embarrassed. “You really wish me to tell you? It affects you personally, in a way, and you may find it rather unpleasant.”

  “Still, tell me.”

  “Well, I think the mainspring of the whole plot undoubtedly must have been the fact that your brother certainly was very deeply in love with her. I think he always has been, but when she married he was too young to be tak
en seriously.”

  “Oh!” Lady Milborne paled a little. “That’s rather—beastly. You mean, if she could eliminate not only Miss Sinclair, but Lynn as well, she had a good chance of becoming a duchess?”

  “The practical certainty of becoming a duchess,” amended Mr. Chitterwick. “She was playing for high stakes.”

  “How—foul.”

  They sat in silence while the waiter changed the plates, and it was not till some minutes after the next course had been brought that Lady Milborne spoke again. Then she picked up the conversation at the exact point at which it had been left. “So that’s why there had to be that impersonation of Lynn by that Benson man?”

  “Yes, from her point of view. He, of course, imagined he was doing it for quite a different reason.”

  “I never have quite understood that. Tell me the whole plot, Mr. Chitterwick, from the very beginning.”

  “Well!” Mr. Chitterwick inserted a mouthful of roast duck and began thoughtfully to chase some peas round his plate. The precautions of his hostess had met with their reward; he was no longer self-conscious and was quite ready to talk. “Well, the whole thing seems to have begun with Mary Goole, as she calls herself (and I understand it is probably her real name). She, as you know, is a professional criminal. A clever one, because she knows exactly how much use to make of the truth. The story she told Chief Inspector Moresby and myself at our first interview with her was perfectly true, so far as it went; the result being that she was never under suspicion at all. They even corroborated it in America, and she had always covered up her traces so well that no question was raised.

  “She took her post with Miss Sinclair in accordance with her usual method, which was to employ her position as companion to a wealthy old lady to rob that lady’s wealthy friends. The character she adopted for these occasions, by the way, of an efficient machine with none of the ordinary feminine weaknesses for dress and so on, was an excellent one; and part of it no doubt came naturally to her, because she is an extremely efficient person.

  “In the course of her duties with Miss Sinclair she heard frequently of an unknown cousin in America, to whom at first she attached no importance; gradually, however, what with the name and the nose and other indications, it dawned upon her that this cousin must be a man whom she herself had known there, with whom indeed she had actually engaged once upon a criminal enterprise—a hanger-on of the criminal fraternity, without enough courage or enterprise to strike out in big crime for himself, and yet constitutionally unable to lead an honest life. She, a highly efficient criminal, despised this man very thoroughly, but she now saw an excellent way of making use of him to their common advantage. She wrote to him, therefore, told him of the circumstances, and suggested that should he come over at once she had a plan all ready by which he could obtain possession of most of the old lady’s fortune. Benson promptly came over.

  “This plan of Miss Goole’s was based on two facts. The first was that Miss Sinclair was very much more serious about her threats of altering her will than Major Sinclair ever imagined, and that given enough provocation, such as the fact of her nephew’s marriage being broken to her in a sufficiently defiant way by the Major himself, she could undoubtedly be induced by Miss Goole to do so. The second fact was that Miss Sinclair was suffering from disease of the heart and did not herself expect to live more than a few months, though she insisted on this being concealed from Major Sinclair, saying that she hated a fuss being made over her and there was time enough for that when she really was dead. But the point that Miss Goole had seized on, of course, was that if Miss Sinclair did alter her will the chances were almost certainties that she would die before any reconciliation with the Major could take place and the will be altered again.

  “The whole plan of the impersonation then was entirely Miss Goole’s. Her idea was that Benson, who was known to her as a clever mimic, should meet Miss Sinclair, representing himself as the Major, in such circumstances that the chances of Miss Sinclair’s detecting the fraud would be reduced to a minimum, and then tell her brutally of the marriage with such defiance and in such terms that she would never forgive him. That was the sum of Miss Goole’s plan. The embroideries on it came from Mrs. Sinclair.”

  “It was a clever scheme of the Goole’s,” commented Lady Milborne judicially.

  “Exceedingly clever. And so was her way of carrying it out. The meeting place she decided on was the Piccadilly Palace lounge. There is always a good deal of noise going on there. Miss Sinclair would be out of her element and confused. Without her spectacles (an easy matter for Miss Goole to mislay) she would not only be unable to see clearly, but she would feel still more at a loss. As for arranging that Miss Sinclair should accept the Piccadilly Palace as a meeting place, that was simplicity itself. All she had to do was to substitute that place in the letter she wrote for Miss Sinclair to the Major making the appointment, change the latter from two-thirty to three-thirty, and tell her afterward that the Piccadilly Palace was the Major’s own choice. Mouse saw that, and it is quite correct. And that is really all Miss Goole had to do with the affair.”

  Mr. Chitterwick leaned back and toyed with the glass, swishing the wine absently round inside. The duck had disappeared, a savoury had followed it. With a basket of fruit on the table and a glass of port expected at any moment, less interruptions would follow.

  Lady Milborne waited until the port had been served and the waiter was out of the way. “And then Judy came into it because—– Oh, you go on, Mr. Chitterwick. You’re telling it beautifully. It’s so much clearer, hearing it all like this instead of in snippets, which I’ve had simply to drag out of people.”

  “Yes,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, thus bidden, “Mrs. Sinclair came into it because Benson, not satisfied with the share of the spoils that Miss Goole had allotted him, thought he would try running with the hare instead of hunting with the hounds. Both he and Miss Goole are somewhat reticent on this point, but I gather that the discussions as to the sharing of the reward had been quite acrimonious. As the originator of the plan Miss Goole was sure that she ought to get the lion’s portion, Benson himself being rewarded with not much more than a pittance. Benson didn’t see that at all, especially as Miss Goole’s ideas included, by way of making quite certain of things, no less than marriage, with a settlement conferring on her not much short of everything the two hoped to get from Miss Sinclair. So Benson, having thought things well over, decided that he couldn’t be much worse off in any case and that he would double-cross (I understand that is the term) Miss Goole by making overtures to the other side with a view to finding out what they would pay to buy him off. By a fatal chance he tackled on the subject not Major Sinclair, who would have promptly kicked him downstairs, but Mrs. Sinclair, who did nothing of the sort. Benson’s sort, of course, always prefer to carry through shady transactions with women rather than men.

  “Whether Mrs. Sinclair had been already meditating some drastic method of obtaining for her husband possession of Miss Sinclair’s wealth I cannot say, but judging by the alacrity with which she was able to see the advantages to herself of Miss Goole’s plan I should think it most probable. It was she, I understand now, who had always insisted on keeping the marriage secret; she took Miss Sinclair’s threats seriously, if the Major did not. In any case she embraced the opportunity without hesitation and, so far as Benson was concerned, immediately took the affair completely in hand. Miss Goole, of course, was ignorant that Benson had approached Mrs. Sinclair, and she was kept in that ignorance all the time.

  “Benson had not the faintest idea that murder was meditated. He was nothing but a pliant tool in Mrs. Sinclair’s capable hands. And I think he must have fallen under Mrs. Sinclair’s spell, for he seems to have carried out without question what must have appeared to him some quite remarkable maneuvers. Mrs. Sinclair told him, you see, to go ahead with Miss Goole’s plan, but to adopt it for himself; if he took a strong fine there would be no
need to share the proceeds with her at all. Moreover, if he would carry out a few small suggestions of her own, Mrs. Sinclair would back him up afterward in the exclusion of Miss Goole.

  “Of course Mrs. Sinclair was somewhat hard put to it to find a plausible reason why she should wish Miss Sinclair’s money left away from her own husband; and plausible or not, what she told Benson was that the Major was a spendthrift and had treated her abominably, that she was on the point of leaving him, and that she would very much like to ensure his being left penniless in the future by way of some revenge for all she had suffered from him. That sounds thin to us now, but no doubt Mrs. Sinclair was able with her histrionic powers to make a singularly convincing and moving story of it, adding hypothetical details of the Major’s ill-treatment and so working on Benson’s emotions that, he was ready to do anything she wanted. What he was required to do first of all was to go, wearing the wig Miss Goole had procured him for his impersonation of Major Sinclair (and which, I understand, renders him quite surprisingly like the Major), and ask, not too ostentatiously but nevertheless in a way which would not be forgotten afterward, at three or four chemists’ shops for prussic acid.

  “Here again Mrs. Sinclair must have had difficulty in finding a reasonable excuse, and what she told him was that it would be a good thing to endeavour to establish an indication that Major Sinclair was contemplating poisoning his aunt; this, she pointed out, would make it impossible that the breach between them could ever be healed. And to further this idea she induced him to undertake, in the Piccadilly Palace interview, to pour a few drops into Miss Sinclair’s coffee from a phial with which she would provide him. This liquid, she said, would be nothing really but a violent aperient, but Miss Sinclair would be taken mildly ill, imagine she had been poisoned, and at once the story of the attempts to buy prussic acid would come out. In the same way, she added, it would be advisable if possible to engage the attention of someone sitting near who would be a witness to the fact that the Major had dropped something into Miss Sinclair’s coffee. And that is how I came into the affair.