Murder Underground (British Library Crime Classics)

by Mavis Doriel Hay

  “I don’t believe she was. I don’t believe she would ever have done a thing about it, except hold it over Bob’s head as a threat. She simply loved a sense of power and she loved to be in the know.”

  “And in the limelight,” Betty pointed out. “She would have revelled in the position of informer—all for the public good, y’know! Setting the police on the track of a dangerous gang; appearing as witness. Oh, can’t you just see her?”

  “P’rhaps so. But my idea is that Bob murdered her just out of revenge, because she’d threatened him and simply infuriated him. People do do that sort of thing. He never thought of recovering the brooch.”

  “That all sounds most unlikely to me, and there’s no need to make up theories to show that Bob did it. I can’t believe that he had anything to do with it. It’s just his bad luck that he’s connected with it, as it was his bad luck to get mixed up with the burglary.”

  At another table Mrs. Daymer was discussing the subject with Mr. Grange. A casual visitor would have wondered how they came to share a table. Mrs. Daymer was a middle-aged lady who liked to accentuate the gaunt strangeness of her appearance by unfashionable clothes. She would explain proudly that they were of hand-woven material—“by that wonderful man Blympton Torr; does the whole thing, right from the sheep’s back!” Perhaps their intimate connection with the sheep justified their peculiar unwieldiness.

  Francis Grange was an unremarkable, youngish man who had not been long at the Frampton. Mrs. Daymer would have explained that she was studying him, for she was a novelist. She often told her friends, “I like to study types. When I have sucked one dry, then...” A flick of her bony hand indicated the fate of the sucked type. Meanwhile Francis Grange seemed to be submitting meekly to the sucking process. A careful observer might have concluded that Mrs. Daymer’s chief reason for keeping him by her was that he formed an attentive audience, and might have guessed also that even the best audience will in time feel that the performance has gone on long enough. But Mr. Grange was still sedately enjoying the first act.

  “This is peculiarly interesting to me,” Mrs. Daymer was informing him. “It would be hypocritical to pretend that any one of us is overwhelmed with grief at the removal of Miss Pongleton, though of course we all deplore the horrible nature of her end. The criminal type is one which I have in the past studied intensively. I have not formed any theory about the crime yet—it is too soon—but I shall see the whole thing plainly before long.”

  “What I can’t understand,” said Mr. Grange—“and perhaps you as a student of human nature can explain it—is how we all seem to know so much about Miss Pongleton’s affairs and Bob Thurlow’s affairs immediately she is dead and he is suspected of her murder.”

  “An interesting point,” conceded Mrs. Daymer, nodding at him and waving a large knuckled hand encumbered with several enormous silver rings obtrusively “hand-wrought”. “It’s partly due to the fact that our interest is now concentrated on these figures and automatically we rake up from our minds any scraps of information about them which may have lodged there unnoticed. And it’s partly due to lack of reticence in the lower classes. That poor child Nellie has been blurting out the whole story of the brooch to anyone who would listen to her.”

  “I suppose that’s it. That brooch affair makes the whole case against Bob Thurlow look pretty black, I must say. And his being on duty in the station, too.”

  “Ah!” Mrs. Daymer gloated over Mr. Grange’s uncritical acceptance of the obvious. “That’s just the sort of coincidence that leads the police astray in these murder cases. You must consider all the probabilities: an underground station, to begin with. Anyone might be there—an ideal scene for a murder. Then Miss Pongleton’s character: she was a hard old woman, without doubt; she was reputed to be rich; she was secretive and revengeful. She may have had hundreds of enemies. She was just the kind of apparently respectable old lady who may have had a questionable past.”

  “But really,” Mr. Grange protested; “isn’t that going a bit too far—I mean about her past? You don’t know anything?”

  “You mustn’t take me too literally, Mr. Grange. As a novelist, I am surveying the possibilities of the situation.”

  “And then about the place of the murder,” Mr. Grange went on. “Anyone might be in an underground station certainly; but on the stairs—the stairs at Belsize Park too; why, it’s the deepest of the lot, next to Hampstead. And, by the way, why was Miss Pongleton at Belsize Park? Hampstead station is much nearer.”

  “Although Miss Pongleton was rich she was fantastically miserly,” Mrs. Daymer informed him solemnly. “That is why she always walked to Belsize Park and so saved one penny. Also she had a horror of lifts. Whether it was purely the sort of unreasoning fear which sometimes afflicts even the most sensible types, or whether there was some reason for it hidden among the secrets of her past, I cannot say—at present. But she always walked down the stairs.”

  “Perhaps she just disliked the sensation of leaving one’s stomach behind,” Mr. Grange suggested. “Well, that accounts for her being there, but it doesn’t explain how the murderer came to be there. Belsize Park station stairs are not worn hollow with constant use, I should say.”

  “No. That points, of course, to someone who knew her habits—and it doesn’t point very strongly to Bob Thurlow. Why should he know that?”

  “Well, he works on the underground and lately he’s been at that station. He may have noticed her coming down the stairs on other occasions.”

  “But equally anyone who had known her for long, or had lived in the same house with her for some time, would know her cranky ways. Moreover, such a person would be more likely to know of her appointment with the dentist this morning.”

  “She struck me as a secretive old lady—and I think you said that she was so—not much given to discussing her affairs with others.”

  “She was secretive, true; but she had her confidants,” Mrs. Daymer told him. She glanced hastily round at the other tables and then leaned forward and hissed: “Mr. Slocomb may know more about her affairs than he cares to admit. Cissie Fain was in her favour, but I think only for the sake of the services she rendered in running errands, posting letters and so forth. The brooch affair shows that Miss Pongleton was not above sharing a secret with the maid, Nellie.”

  Even that very unsuspicious young man Mr. Grange guessed that Mrs. Daymer felt some resentment towards the late Miss Pongleton because the old lady had never confided in her. With a vague idea of offering a sop to her pride he said, “I, for one, was never admitted to her confidence.”

  “Probably you are lucky,” said Mrs. Daymer viciously. “Before this case is over everyone who knew anything about Miss Pongleton’s intended movements this morning will be suspect!” Her steely eyes glittered at him fiercely.

  “I say! Not us—the Frumps, as Miss Fain calls us all in the Frampton.”

  Mrs. Daymer merely nodded severely. She was not pleased by his quotation from Cissie.

  “But you have to have a motive for a murder, you know, Mrs. Daymer,” Mr. Grange protested. Involuntarily he glanced round the dining-room as if looking for signs of criminal intent on the faces of the people gathered there: Cissie and Betty, young and sleek and modern, still chattering earnestly over their coffee; Mr. Joseph Slocomb, greyly respectable in melancholy solitude at the table which the late Miss Pongleton had usually shared with him; old Mr. Blend also alone, ruddy and bearded like a countryman, who was as usual a course behind the others because he was poring over a paper and marking paragraphs with a gold pencil; the Porters, a middle-aged couple who sat in their bed-sitting-room a good deal and therefore had little to do with the other boarders. Finally Mrs. Bliss, plump and important, who from her corner table seemed to preside over the company. Mr. Grange saw Nellie scuttle up to her and whisper agitatedly in her ear, meanwhile casting scared glances over her shoulder.

  Mrs. Bliss rose majestically. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced. There was a sudden cess
ation of clatter and chatter.

  “A police inspector is here and wishes to interview each of you in turn. Just to see if you can tell him anything that will help, you know,” she added, abandoning the grand manner. “I think we had better adjourn to the drawing-room as soon as we have finished dinner, and the officer can see us in the smoking-room.”

  “I’m through, Mrs. Bliss,” volunteered Cissie. “Shall I go first?”

  “Just a moment, my dear,” said Mrs. Bliss. “I have to say a word to the officer myself.” She sailed out of the room. The Porters followed her with their noses in the air and departed upstairs to their room, their demeanour declaring emphatically: “We’re not playing this silly game.”

  Mrs. Daymer and Mr. Grange, followed by Mr. Slocomb, rose and crossed the hall to the drawing-room. Cissie and Betty sat for a few moments patting their hair and touching up their complexions in preparation for the interview. As Mrs. Daymer strode from the room Cissie leant forward and, emphasizing her words by beating the air with her lipstick, whispered, “Mrs. Daymer’s studying the crime; you’ll see; too sinister! But she may have arranged it herself as an opportunity for gathering data. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  GERRY BLUNDERS IN

  IN the drawing-room Tuppy, a fat elderly terrier, was snugly settled on the hearthrug, his nose resting on the fender. He showed no symptoms of pining. Mrs. Daymer entered the room first, with Mr. Grange and Mr. Slocomb at her heels, and settled herself in an armchair at one side of the fireplace, drawing over her shoulders a scarf of shot blue and green which had been slung between her elbows. Before sitting down she hesitated a moment, casting an uncertain glance at the opposite armchair, with a higher back, which had the additional advantage of being on the side of the fire furthest from the door from which draughts were apt to stray over Mrs. Daymer’s back. Directly opposite the fire was a sofa, and Mr. Grange seated himself on this, at the end nearest to Mrs. Daymer. Mr. Slocomb hovered round the room, picking up papers, glancing over them and then refolding them more neatly before laying them down again.

  Cissie and Betty arrived and flumped side by side on the sofa, and then old Mr. Blend toddled in with his newspaper and his gold pencil and sat down at a little table with a reading-lamp which stood against the wall beyond the still vacant armchair.

  Cissie was tickling Tuppy with her toe and remarking to him: “Well, well, diddums; poor old Tuppy!” The obese dog only stirred sluggishly, tucked his hind legs and his tail in tighter, and continued to stare at the fire.

  No one seemed to know how to start conversation. Each was uncertain, perhaps, as to the appropriate note to strike. Mr. Slocomb, having set in order all the papers which were lying about the room, proceeded very deliberately to the empty chair and sank into it. There was a distinct stiffening of attention among the others, but no one spoke. Mrs. Daymer shot at him a look of cold hatred for his superior tactics and inwardly cursed her own timidity.

  Mrs. Bliss entered. “Now, Cissie dear, perhaps you will go in,” she suggested. Cissie shot up from the sofa with alacrity.

  “I shouldn’t give him any of your theories if I were you,” Betty warned her.

  With a toss of her head and subsequent anxious patting of possibly disarranged locks, Cissie left the room.

  Mrs. Bliss hovered uncertainly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just bring my knitting and sit here with you. Really I feel all upset, what with identifying the poor soul’s body this afternoon and the dog-leash and all——”

  “I should have thought they’d have fetched Basil to identify his aunt’s body,” suggested Betty whilst Mrs. Bliss was fetching her knitting.

  “Probably this address was in her bag—she was very meticulous,” Mrs. Daymer pointed out. “Just the type to have her name and address and age and height and weight entered in a notebook.”

  “And I should think they know her at Belsize Park station,” said Mr. Grange. “It isn’t everyone who walks down the stairs.”

  Mrs. Bliss returned and Mr. Slocomb rose ceremoniously.

  “Will you take this chair, Mrs. Bliss?”

  “Oh, really, I couldn’t, thanking you all the same, Mr. Slocomb.” Mrs. Bliss fluttered into Cissie’s vacated seat on the sofa. “Though of course there’s no sense in leaving it for poor Miss Pongleton now,” she added. “I don’t know when I’ve been so upset!” Mrs. Bliss smoothed out her satin lap and began to click the shining needles.

  “The identification of the body must have been a harrowing experience,” Mrs. Daymer told her soothingly. “And a dog-leash, did you say?”

  “Why yes; he did it with her own leash—poor Tuppy’s leash—tight round her throat! Brutal, I call it; and to think how often Bob has taken poor Tuppy out on that very leash!”

  “Are you sure it was the same leash?” asked Mr. Slocomb. “After all, one dog-leash is very like another.”

  “A strap, the Evening News said,” Betty pointed out.

  “Well, a leash is a kind of strap. Anyway, I know Tuppy’s leash; haven’t I had to hunt for it only too often? It was broken, and poor Miss Pongleton mended it herself with brown thread that she borrowed from Mrs. Porter. Why, Bob took it home in his pocket; we thought it was his forgetfulness, and to think he may have been meditating this dastardly act!”

  “But he brought it back,” cried Betty. “I distinctly remember seeing him in the hall with it one evening, explaining to Pong—Miss Pongleton.”

  “I don’t know as much about all this as the rest of you do,” began Mr. Grange apologetically; “but I thought the idea was that Bob Thurlow might want to murder Miss Pongleton because of the brooch affair, and surely that only happened a day or two ago—some time after Bob went home with the leash.”

  “I just mean to say,” explained Mrs. Bliss, “that what a man can do once he can do again. We all know Bob had access to that leash, and it was that leash that strangled the poor lady.”

  “I must say I can’t see why Bob should want to call attention to the fact that he could get hold of the leash if he was going to murder anyone with it. And then, of course, when he did take the leash home with him he can’t have had any thought of murdering Miss Pongleton, because the brooch affair hadn’t occurred. It’s all very muddling,” Betty complained.

  “It’s as plain as daylight to me,” said Mrs. Bliss decisively. “Only too plain. If you’d seen the poor lady laid out there in the mortuary and that old purple coat of hers—I really felt ashamed, but she always said it was no use dressing up for a dentist. I went to the station to make enquiries, you see, and then they found her, but I didn’t go down the stairs to see her myself; I went to the mortuary later on and there she lay——”

  “Isn’t it possible,” Mr. Slocomb interrupted hastily, “that if the young man did contemplate murder his thoughts might turn to the leash just because of that chance occurrence when he took it home in his pocket? Of course I feel very strongly that we should all refrain from passing premature judgment on a fellow man. We do not know yet who else may have been upon those fatal stairs this morning.”

  Cissie Fain swung into the room. “That’s over! Your turn, Betty. Like one of those games we used to play at children’s parties, isn’t it?” Cissie suggested brightly as she took her friend’s seat on the sofa and began to smoke a cigarette with puffs of relief.

  “What I want to know,” she told Mrs. Bliss, “is why, if Bob murdered Miss Pongleton because of the brooch, he didn’t take it away with him—or did he? The inspector wouldn’t tell me a thing, and he didn’t seem awfully interested, either, in what I had to say!”

  “Bob didn’t get the brooch,” announced Mrs. Bliss, full of importance. “And my theory is that he was disturbed too soon, or else he couldn’t find it. Anyway, there it was, laid out with her other things at the police-station. They found it on her, right enough.”

  “Just what was the story of that brooch?” asked Mr. Grange. “Everyone is talking about it, so I suppose there is no h
arm in telling the true facts; some version of them is sure to be in the papers to-morrow.”

  “Mrs. Bliss can tell us, I expect,” suggested Mr. Slocomb. He sat judicially in the deep armchair, appreciating its comfort but not relaxing to it. His small, well-kept hands tapped against each other gently above his knees. He wore his customary severe expression, with the corners of his thin mouth drawn down from the point of his upper lip. He might have been presiding over an official enquiry into Miss Pongleton’s death.

  “I expect I do know more about it than most people, seeing that poor Nellie has been talking of it all day,” Mrs. Bliss admitted with pride; “though in such a random way that sometimes it’s hard to make head or tail of what the silly girl says. It seems that Bob was mixed up in this burglary at Lady Morton’s house in Surrey on Tuesday night. I don’t rightly know, but it appears that he got in with a lot of lads who were worse than Bob ree-lized. He hadn’t been in any crime before and didn’t know one when he saw it, and when they took him with them that night they didn’t tell him till they got there what they were after.”

  “But why should they take such a noodle as Bob with them?” asked Cissie.

  “It seems, according to Nellie’s tale, that one of their gang failed them and they wanted someone to drive the car and keep watch. When Bob ree-lized what was up he was too scared to do anything but what they told him. They got away with some money and things from the bedrooms, and they gave Bob as his share an old-fashioned brooch—and it’s my belief they gave him more than that and we shall hear of it in time. Anyway, Bob comes up here Wednesday afternoon, Nellie’s day out, and takes her out, and he gives her this brooch—no doubt thinking it an ordinary thing that no one would notice, though he did tell her not to go showing it about. Well, it’s a kind of brooch that was ordinary enough in its day; my mother had one just like it, but that’s neither here nor there.”

  The story was interrupted by the return of Betty.