by Bruce, Leo
“Ferrer (Vincenzo), in Latin, Vicentius Ferrerius, known as St. Vincent Ferrer, a Spanish Dominican, born at Valencia, January 23, 1357. He published a Tractatus de Moderno Ecclesiae Schismate, and was famous throughout Christendom for his miracles, his preaching, and his success in converting Jews and Saracens. Died at Vannes, in France, April 5, 1419.”
Was I not reasonable in supposing that the name of a fourteenth-century Spanish Dominican, who had afterwards been canonized, had only been dragged into this because of its similarity to that of the two brothers? Or could the Saint have some actual influence in the matter? At all events there was a flimsy aspect of the police’s explanation. If Stewart meant to stab the doctor, it was very hard to see how he was going to make anyone think that Benson had committed suicide. A doctor of all people would be the last to kill himself by that difficult and chancy means.
6. Pre-selection gears.
Was Stute right in attaching quite the importance he did to these simple inquiries from Stewart to Ed Wilson? It is true that the doctor’s car had them, and that anybody who intended to drive such a car for the first time might well make a few inquiries about their working. But then so had hundreds of other cars pre-selection gears, and for all we knew Stewart might have thought of buying one. It was only as the words of a guilty man that his inquiries had any significance at all.
7. The quarrel.
The truth about this we should never know since Duncan had committed suicide, but it remained a significant, and a very important matter. Duncan had gathered that their quarrel was to do with Sheila, and yet Sheila herself had blandly stated that this was impossible as Benson was indifferent to her infidelities except as a possible means of freeing himself from the ties of married life. In any case, if she was to be believed, there had been no grounds for such a ruarrel since her love-affair had been with Peter and not with Stewart. Over what then had they quarrelled that evening? Was it true that Benson was blackmailing Stewart? If so, on what grounds? What could he know about this quiet, church-going man, who seemed to be respected, if not particularly liked, in the district? Perhaps we should know something of that when we came to interview Stewart, but at present that quarrel seemed a misfit. As for the other sentence Duncan had heard, “It’s in my surgery now,” this might mean anything or nothing. It might be a casual reference to something Benson had borrowed from Stewart, it might be one of a hundred trivial details. On the other hand it might possibly refer to some evidence of something through which he was obtaining money from the elder brother.
8. Money.
I always looked for money considerations in such crimes as these, and there were several here. First of all there were the four sums of £500 each which had been drawn by Stewart in £1 notes from his bank since he had inherited his fortune. Large sums in small notes always suggested blackmail. And one of these had been found in a brown-paper parcel in Stewart’s dressing-table upstairs. It was, of course, possible to admit the police theory that these had been drawn for, and possibly paid to, Benson, and recovered from his body after the murder. But apart from the inadvisability of admitting any police theories, I had serious doubt on this score. Then also on the subject of money there had been the visitor to Stewart in his father’s time; Mr. Orpen, alias Oppenstein, who had turned out to be a money-lender. How, if at all, did he come into the case? Could there be any connection between him and St. Vincent Ferrer, who was famous for his conversion of Jews?
9. The dagger.
This was, perhaps, the most puzzling clue of all. Why had it been returned to the table when it might well have been left in Benson’s throat? Was one to admit Stute’s suggestion that it had been placed there by force of habit by Stewart, who was its chief user? It had his finger-prints on it, and yet it had been cleaned by Rose after Stewart had left the house that day, and he had not returned to the library till he had gone there with his guests after dinner. It was, of course, the most damning piece of evidence that Stute had.
10. Figures in the drive.
The girl Freda’s evidence of having seen these two men was the most sensational, and probably the most significant, clue on which we had stumbled. Her story tallied with that of the young mechanic, and it was fairly safe to assume that the first man, the one with the bicycle, the one who had twice rung the front-door bell, was the mechanic himself. But what about that second man whose presence had so startled the first, and who had waited until the cyclist’s disappearance before he had quietly crept away? Was he the murderer? That seemed a most important point on which we had still to decide.
11. Front-door keys.
So far as our information went, the only people with keys were Stewart, Duncan, Mrs. Duncan, Ed Wilson, Rose, and Freda. Now, since the house had been carefully locked up and no one had broken in, the murderer had to be one of the three following: (a) one of those with a key, mentioned above, (b) someone who secretly had a key and had not ever used it to the knowledge of those we had cross-examined, and (c) someone who had remained hidden in the house while Duncan had locked up. I noted down this point, but I realized that it still left the net a wide one.
12. The “Passing Moment.”
Peter and Wakefield had badly wanted money for this, and Wakefield at least had seemed to me a man who would stop at nothing in attaining his means. Had they done more than ask Stewart for the money and resign themselves to his emphatic refusal?
This was all the evidence that I knew of which had come to light, and I proceeded to consider the people so far involved in the case.
When I began to consider these I was faced by one very obvious difficulty. It was to divide them into those who might possibly have committed the murder, and those who couldn’t have done so. In all the cases with which I had been connected this had been the first measure in finding suspects. What made it difficult now is that really only one of these people seemed to have any motive at all—and that was Stewart. With an absence of motive to guide one, one could go on listing possible murderers among people known and unknown, ad infinitum. One could start with the probables, those in and out of the house, and continue down to the individuals like the policeman who had been on duty that night, and further, to that half of the people in London who could not account for their movements at the time of Benson’s murder.
So, instead of attempting to make a list of suspects, I decided to put down on paper the names of those who seemed to have some direct connection with the matter, and consider what we knew of them. This was my list:
1. Stewart Ferrers. We had not yet interviewed him, of course, though I understood that Peter was arranging with his solicitor for Beef to see him. (There seemed to me, by the way, something almost superstitious in Peter’s faith in Beef. Only superstition could account for the trouble he was taking to give Beef every facility.) But in the meantime, the personality of Stewart, so far as it had been revealed, was not very attractive. We had been taught to imagine him as a stern, uncharitable, religious man, keeping his own counsel, and his own bank balance. He had certainly been drawing these curious sums of money, and there seemed a good chance of his having been blackmailed. The actual circumstances of the crime as the police knew them were strongly against him, and it would need some startling work on Beefs part to exonerate him.
2. Peter Ferrers. He was a strong possibility, I had felt from the beginning, as a murderer. We hadn’t yet investigated his alibi, but so far as we knew there was no reason why he shouldn’t have kept a key of the house, dropped Wakefield that evening, gone to his flat and established his presence there, crept out by some back way, murdered Benson, returned in the small hours, and received Duncan’s telephone call as if nothing had happened. On the other hand I liked Peter and found in him that rare quality in any modern—sincerity. Beef liked him too, and Beefs instincts were apt to lead him well.
3. Wakefield. In character, the nearest thing I could recognize as a potential murderer, at any rate among those I had met in the case, but again with no known motive.
5. Mrs. Duncan. Well, if ever a woman were capable physically of committing a murder, this one looked as though she were. But what conceivable motive could she have? And why should she be suspected rather than anyone who had passed the Cypresses at any time on foot? It was true she was one of those in the house, and the only one of them (except Stewart of course) who looked powerful enough to have done it. But that was all that one could say.
6. Rose and Freda. It would really have been very far-fetched to think of these two as possible murderesses merely because they were employed in the house where a murder had been committed.
7. Ed Wilson. If anyone in this tangle might be considered a suspect, he had to be. But again, one could see no possible motive. He had been more sympathetic in his attitude towards Benson than any of the others, who cordially disliked the man. And although he had no alibi, he stood to gain nothing so far as one could see.
8. The mechanic. He had admittedly been up to the house at twelve o’clock that night, but beyond that had no connecting point. I liked his easy manner and open face, and personally refused to suspect him.
9. Wilkinson. Now there was a man one felt physically, morally and mentally capable of murdering another man with very little concrete motive. He had the sourness and strength of the old type of villain, and from the first moment that Beef had gone into his pub and seen how badly kept and uninviting it was, how the beer pipes from the cellar needed cleaning, and the beer itself was none of the best, from that moment Beef had decided that he was an “unsatisfactory character” and had had, he assured me, “an eye on him from the start.” He admittedly went up to the house at frequent intervals, and would not tell us when he had last been there, but again there was no known motive. If Beef’s pretty interpretation of Omar Khayyam’s reference to the surly Tapster had anything in it, this man’s connection with the murder might yet be established.
10. Sheila Benson. She had given us our most puzzling interview. Her blatant disregard for decency was so conspicuous as almost to be thought a bluff. Her evidence had been perfectly clear, but it conflicted with so much else that we had heard. Was she really in love with Peter, as she said? Could she really have scarcely known Stewart, as she claimed? And when she told us that the doctor was indifferent to her infidelities, was she speaking the truth? Those seemed important questions to probe.
11. The old man. I remembered Ed Wilson’s admission of having met, on the morning after the murder, an old man leaving the main gate. Had he any connection with the “second figure” seen by Rose from the landing window? Or was he some harmless tramp who had slept in the summerhouse that night? If the former, it seemed possible that he was the murderer. If the latter, he might have very valuable information.
12. Orpen, or Oppenstein. He had no connection with the murder, of course, but was a name I remembered, since it had interested Beef, and been remembered by the cook.
Chapter XIII
WHEN Beef was what he somewhat ambiguously called “on the job,” his old habits were apt to return to him, and he liked to work regular hours. In this at least, I felt, he was original, for every other detective, of whose exploits I had read, would examine foot-prints, if possible, by moonlight, and make quite ordinary inquiries in the small hours with all the business of Grand Guignol. Beef would arrive at his headquarters—usually the scene of the murder—with great punctuality at ten o’clock, take an hour off for what he pompously termed his dinner, and leave the place promptly at six. This did not mean, of course, that he would not, on occasion, do a little nocturnal prowling, or early-morning observation. But he had to have good reason for it beyond the providence of inexpensive colour for his biographer.
That next day he was in a silent, self-important mood when I met him, and told me solemnly that he had “one or two investigations to carry out.” When I tried to discover the nature of these, he told me that I “would see,” and said no more until we arrived at Sydenham.
At the Cypresses he asked at once for Ed Wilson, and the young man came to us in the library. I noticed a remarkable change in his manner from the last time I had seen him. Instead of the rather aggressive, almost cheeky young man whom we had interviewed, this was a jumpy and apprehensive Wilson, who seemed afraid of each question before it was put to him.
“You’ve got nothing else to tell me?” asked Beef, eyeing him narrowly.
“No, Sergeant,” he said, and shook his head with uncharacteristic vigour.
“Sure?” persisted Beef.
“Why, what do you think I might have?” returned Wilson, a little of the old aggression in his manner again.
“All right,” said Beef, “we’ll leave it at that. Only, if you have got anything up your sleeve, I’d advise you friendly to out with it. Now then, I want to see that summer-house.”
Ed Wilson seemed genuinely surprised. “Summer-house?” he repeated.
“Yes. That summer-house where you told me it would be possible for an old tramp to spend the night.”
“Oh yes,” said Wilson, “I remember.”
Beef picked up his hat, and we followed the chauffeur to the front door. “Nasty sort of a morning,” commented Beef, as a gust of damp wind caught our faces in that gloomy drive. Neither of us replied as we took the gravel path beside the windows which led to a small lawn which might once have been used for croquet, at the back of the house. We crossed this and found, half-concealed by the shrubs beyond it, one of those damp-looking, rotting little structures which the gardeners of fifty years ago loved to put in the most conspicuous points of their gardens. It seemed more a shed than a summer-house, and even before he opened the door, I knew the smell of rotting wood, and foresaw the stacks of miscellaneous garden tools and ornaments which we should find inside. I was right too—the place did not seem to have been used for anything but storing for many years, and I could smell the damp in the floor-boards.
Beef sniffed the air with the vigour of a vacuum-cleaner being demonstrated by a young and ardent salesman. “Hm,” he said, and then looked round him. After a moment he stooped down and picked up three or four small pieces of paper. These were about an inch by three-quarters of an inch, with one long edge straight and the opposite edge charred, the two ends being roughly torn. He took them between his thick finger and thumb and then placed them carefully in the pages of his notebook. “Good,” he grunted, wishing no doubt to be enigmatic.
Replacing his notebook in his pocket, he ignored the rest of the shed and, standing in the doorway, he began to examine the ground over which we had come.
“Now, if anyone was to want to get from here to the front gate at night,” he said, “when it didn’t matter whether they were seen from the windows of the house or not, that’s the way they’d take, isn’t it?” and he pointed obliquely across the lawn. “If, on the other hand,” he continued sagaciously, “they was to be creeping out in the morning, under full observation from the windows, they’d probably go round that way, wouldn’t they?” and he indicated what might have been a path running round under the trees at the side of the lawn, so reaching the gate. “We’ll follow them both,” he said finally.
“But Beef,” I interrupted, thinking this clumsy reasoning was a part of his facade, “what on earth do you expect to find now? If those foot-prints you asked about ever had been there, they would have been washed away long ago.”
“I’m not looking for foot-prints,” returned Beef. He started to pace across the lawn in the way he had first suggested, with his large, rheumy eyes watching the ground near him. He got as far as the front gate without pausing, and returned to the summer-house. “Now the other one,” he said, and he repeat
ed the same performance with the second of the two routes, still, apparently, finding nothing. “That’s funny,” he commented, inevitably, and stood pulling gently at the damp ends of his moustache.
Presently he began to cogitate slowly again. “Now if anyone following that route was to come on anything that had been thrown away by anyone else who had been leaving by the ordinary way, where would they have been most likely to find it?”
“In the attic,” I suggested helpfully.
“No, don’t let’s have any larking about,” said Beef; “this is serious. Can’t you see what I’m getting at? There must be somewhere, where something thrown from there might be come on by somebody going this way.”
“Well,” I admitted, “I suppose that might be so, but it still leaves a fairly large area to cover. If they walked down the drive from the front door to the gate they could easily reach at least ten yards of this shrubbery which would be passed through by a person leaving the summer-house.”
“All right, then, those ten yards we’ll have to search,” said Beef, and the two of us obediently followed him into the bushes.
“What are we to look for?” I asked.
“Anything,” said Beef.
“Well, there are plenty of dead leaves,” I returned sarcastically.
“Anything out of the way,” Beef amplified.
Suddenly there was a triumphant cry from Wilson, who had been a little way from us. “Would you call this out of the way?” he cried, and opening his hand under Beefs nose he showed him a small, unrusted latch-key.
