“That’s a nasty one, Mr. Slocomb. As I was saying, Beryl was rather pleased with the idea that I had set out early to see about her picture. She swallowed it as if it were an oyster—whole.”
“And the police—you told them also that you went to see Mr.—er—Kut-off—er—Kut-us-off—about your cousin’s picture?”
“I don’t know that I told them what I went to see Peter about. I probably just said that I went to see him. But that’s what I did go to see him about. I told you I had thought of going to see him about it before I—well, before I met the body.”
“And presumably he or his wife will have told the police that that was what you did go to see him about?”
“I d’n ’know about that. You see, when I got there I was too dithery to talk business. I don’t know what I did talk about. Though, ’s a matter of fact, we did discuss the picture before I left. I b’lieve Delia mentioned it first; but, as I’ve told you, there’s no knowing what Delia has told the police. She’ll tell anyone what she feels like telling.”
“This is all most unfortunate, Mr. Pongleton, most unfortunate. If you actually had been—er—guilty of—er—crime you could hardly have behaved more wildly than you seem to have done.”
“If I had been a criminal I might have behaved much more cautiously. And, anyway, isn’t it a good business principle not to rush at your business the first moment you meet your man?”
“I should hardly have thought that this business was of such a delicate nature as to require that kind of indirect approach.”
“You don’t know old Peter. Any business with him is of a delicate nature. But, look here, you seem awfully suspicious. You don’t really think I did it? Aunt Phemia may have been tiresome, poor old girl, but I swear——”
Mr. Slocomb raised his hand. “Enough, Mr. Pongleton. It is always my habit to believe in the word and the good intentions of my fellow men until I am compelled to believe otherwise. But there is one other point. You did not trust your cousin enough to tell her the whole story, and there is at least one discrepancy between what you told her and what you related to the police. You informed your cousin that you had supper in Soho with a friend—I presume you gave her to understand that you met a friend by appointment? The other version was that you went to a cinema and then took a simple meal alone because it was too late to return to your rooms for dinner. These two stories have, as it were, been launched, and before long both may reach the ears of one person. How do you propose to deal with this?”
“Just a minute. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust Beryl that I didn’t tell her the whole thing. It was just because it was so beastly—finding Aunt Phemia upside down like that with Tuppy’s leash round her neck; and also because I had been a bit of an ass, and it might worry her. As for dealing with it, I don’t see what I can do, and, after all, does it matter? It’s only a question of how I spent a few hours of the evening, long after Aunt Phemia had been discovered.”
Mr. Slocomb wagged his head to express exasperation and despair.
“Is it impossible for you to understand, Mr. Pongleton, how important it is that all your behaviour should at least seem to be above reproach? Persons who have nothing to conceal do not usually give contradictory accounts of their movements.”
“I tell you I’ve no experience of crime,” Basil insisted; “and I don’t understand the first thing about it.”
“Flippancy will not assist you,” said Mr. Slocomb severely. “And yet another point: that restaurant in Soho. Are you well-known there? The police may make enquiries, and may find that you spent more time there than is consistent with your story.”
“I don’t suppose they noticed me specially. I look much like all the others, and lots of people sit there for donkey’s years.”
“In any case I do not see what steps we can take with regard to that. Perhaps you had better not frequent the place for the next few days.”
“All right. I don’t frequent it, anyway.”
“Now we really must consider, Mr. Pongleton, what action you ought to take about this story you have told your cousin. Can you trust her sufficiently to tell her that there was some trifling inaccuracy in what you said to her on Friday night—owing, doubtless, to the fact that you were—er—upset at the news of your aunt’s death?”
“Trust Beryl! Of course I can trust her. But I don’t want to worry her, y’know. She’s upset enough already about the whole beastly affair, and then Gerry being mixed up in it makes it worse. To think that Gerry and I should both be inspired to go gadding about on those godforsaken stairs on the same day! Looks as if Aunt Phemia had a sort of malign influence, y’know, drawing us both to the fatal spot. Lord! How she must be chuckling! I s’pose I might tell Beryl——”
“I think, Mr. Pongleton, that it would be better for me not to know what you tell your cousin. I need hardly say how repugnant to me is all this—er—prevarication. But I beg you to bear in mind the possibility that she may be questioned closely by the police, and a young woman is liable to be confused by close interrogation, so it would be as well to avoid any unnecessary complications.”
“Oh, Beryl’s as cool as a cucumber. She won’t get flustered. She has a quiet sort of way of saying things so that you’d have to believe her even if you knew she was telling a whopper. She was wonderful with Aunt Phemia! And the whole of Scotland Yard backed by all the Archbishops couldn’t make her tell them anything she didn’t want to say.”
“I leave it to you, Mr. Pongleton, to exercise suitable discretion. Now there is one more point. Do you happen to have any information about Miss Pongleton’s will? I understand that you and your cousin were her joint heirs, and that you were to have the larger portion of your aunt’s estate.”
“Aunt Phemia was always making wills, and one of the things she said in that letter was that she had made a new one and left most of it to Beryl. So you see, I shouldn’t have had any motive for murdering her on Friday morning, should I?”
“Ah!” This seemed to strike Mr. Slocomb as a good point. “And that letter is destroyed?”
“It is—confound it!”
“Your aunt did not state in that letter what she had done with the new will?”
“Heavens, no! But she probably tucked it safely away under the mattress.”
Mr. Slocomb put the tips of his fingers neatly together and considered them. “If an opportunity should occur, Mr. Pongleton, you would be wise to mention that letter to the police and to say—quite truthfully—that it implied that you were disinherited. You will realize that would eliminate what would seem a possible motive on your part for—er—committing the crime.”
“Yes, I see. Of course, I don’t know that she really made a new will, and if the police hear about the letter and don’t find the will, mightn’t they think I’d destroyed it? She was always talking about making new wills, but I don’t suppose she made half of them, though she certainly did keep a supply of those printed forms—she showed them to me once. When she was more or less normal—I mean, when she wasn’t specially annoyed with me, it was to be as you say, most of the fortune to me. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find she had no fortune at all. She was awfully close.”
“But she is known to have inherited a large sum at some time? And she lived in very modest fashion. The Frampton is, of course, highly respectable and reasonably comfortable, but not what one might call extravagant.”
“Extravagant! Good Lord, no! It’s certainly true that my aunt came into some thirty thousand from her brother, my Uncle Geoffrey. She can’t even have spent all the income from that; she saved every penny she could—couldn’t help it; a sort of disease. Goodness knows she wasn’t so anxious to leave me well provided for. But she may have given it away to a dogs’ home or a society for teaching the working man not to waste his wages on gramophones.”
“Hm! Doubtless we shall have more definite information on those points before long.” Mr. Slocomb consulted his notes once more. “The matter of the ticket to
Hampstead—if you should be questioned about that perhaps it might not be unnatural that you should have asked for a ticket to Hampstead out of habit? You go frequently to Hampstead, and habit is strong.”
“Good idea!” Basil agreed. “I might easily do that.”
“Well, Mr. Pongleton, I will see you again before the inquest, which is on Monday, I think? In a case of this kind it is usually brief and formal. Now I must think over all the somewhat—er—disturbing information you have given me.”
“But, look here, aren’t you going to tell me what to do?” cried Basil in distress.
After a discreet knock at the door, Mrs. Waddilove entered.
“Miss Sanders and Mr. Plasher to see you, sir. I told them you were engaged with a gentleman, and they’re waiting to know whether you’d like to see them.”
“I am about to leave,” declared Mr. Slocomb stiffly.
“Mr. Slocomb’s a friend of the family, Mrs. Waddy; not a policeman,” Basil assured her.
Mrs. Waddilove eyed the dour but dapper little man doubtfully.
“Oh, Mr. Pongleton, sir, you will have your joke! Well, I never did think you’d be having the police to luncheon. I’ll show Miss Sanders and Mr. Plasher up, shall I, sir?”
“That’s the idea.”
Mr. Slocomb took his leave. “Bear in mind, Mr. Pongleton, that the account of your movements on Friday that you have given to the police is the true account—for the present. And perhaps a—er—slight reluctance to discuss the affairs of that very—er—painful day would be only natural. In any case, Mr. Pongleton, no interviews with the Press, I should advise. Good day!”
“Wait a mo’. When can I see you again? You may think out something. I have to be with my people all to-morrow....”
“Hm! Not wise for me to come here too often or for you to frequent my office. Monday morning; another early breakfast might be a good move for you. Can you, Mr. Pongleton, arrange to start early enough to meet me and accompany me on a short constitutional? I will leave the Frampton at five minutes past nine; or perhaps five minutes earlier—yes, say nine o’clock. I will look for you at the corner of Church Lane and Rosslyn Hill.”
“But, I say, that’s awful—nine o’clock!” Basil grumbled at Mr. Slocomb as the latter slid out of the room. “Oh, well, I s’pose I must manage it!”
On leaving the house Mr. Slocomb looked round for the gentleman in brown boots and bowler hat. He was not there, but another lounger lolled against the railings of the square. “Second shift, presumably,” Mr. Slocomb murmured to himself. He moved with an easy gliding step which carried him rapidly along. “What a young fool!” he muttered. “The marvel is that he had the good sense to seek my advice!”
CHAPTER SIX
THE PRESS DOES ITS DUTY
WHILST Basil Pongleton was decanting his Friday escapade into the unsympathetic ears of Mr. Joseph Slocomb, the reporters for the Daily Chat and the Evening Snatch and the Sunday Smatter, and their numerous colleagues and rivals, were sniffing eagerly on the trail of Miss Pongleton’s murderer. None of them had been able to glean many details on Friday, although one of them had extracted some very damp reminiscences from Nellie before Mrs. Bliss had intervened. The journalist surmised that Mrs. Bliss herself would not be averse to disclosing her own views of the situation at some other time, when Inspector Caird, who was then claiming her attention, should leave her free.
The Saturday morning papers had therefore not been able to elaborate to any great extent the bare facts of Miss Euphemia Pongleton’s setting forth on Friday morning to visit her dentist, and the discovery of her body in the afternoon. They endeavoured to allay their readers’ curiosity with descriptions of the spiral staircase which descends beside the lift shafts at Belsize Park station. They counted the steps and they examined the narrow gutter against the wall for clues which might have been overlooked by the police, but as it was choked with cigarette cartons, paper, and scraps of tobacco—the litter of months or even years—it was impossible to pick out anything that might be significant. They noted that the stairs were covered with some hard composition on which steps sounded but faintly, and that the clang of the lift gates and the footsteps of passengers hurrying to and from their trains floated up clearly from below.
The stairs led down to a short passage connecting the two main passages along which travellers passed from the lifts to the platforms or from the platforms to the lifts. The observant reporters pointed out that experienced underground travellers often use this passage at the foot of the stairs as a short cut, so that it would excite no surprise if anyone were seen entering it or emerging from it, even though the stairs themselves were rarely used; and also that a man standing on one of the lowest stairs would have a view of the down passage and would probably never be noticed by those who hurried past with their backs to him.
All this merely tended to show that anyone could have approached the staircase from the bottom, and left it by the same route, without being noticed. Unless Gerry Plasher were the murderer—and no one seemed to think that he was—it was almost certain that the criminal had gone up the stairs to the point where Miss Pongleton’s body was found, and, after strangling her, had come down again. Anyone approaching the top of the stairs would probably have been noticed by one of the station officials, who were sure that Miss Pongleton herself and Gerry Plasher were the only people who had taken that route to the platforms on Friday morning.
The relevant facts about Gerry Plasher were soon known to the enquiring representatives of the Press. He was engaged to Miss Pongleton’s niece, but it was generally supposed that Basil Pongleton and not Beryl Sanders would be her heir. He was an ordinary young man, junior partner in a firm of stockbrokers, and had no cause to bear the old lady any malice. It was unlikely that he knew of Miss Pongleton’s appointment with the dentist, or had any reason to suppose that he would pass her on the stairs. He had made no secret of the fact that he used them on Friday morning and saw her there. There was nothing to indicate that he had any opportunity to get hold of the dog-leash from the Frampton.
It was known that the police had examined the rail of the staircase for fingerprints, and had found these in embarrassing profusion. Gerry had left his mark there; Bob Thurlow had left his, but that was easily accounted for by his duties in the station which caused him to use the staircase from time to time—though not on Friday, so far as anyone knew. Other underground workers testified to that, and his fingerprints had been found above the body as well as below it, which implied that he had put them there on his lawful occasions.
What was more mysterious was a footprint which, the reporters learnt from the underground officials, had been found on the stairs, below the body, pointing upwards. It was difficult to get any exact information about this and the police did not want it talked about, so evidently it was important, and presumably it did not belong to anyone who was known to have been on the stairs that morning. But how any foot had contrived it to make a lasting print on the hard composition with which the stairs were covered the reporters could not discover. They referred to it in guarded but rather inaccurate terms as “an important clue” which was “in the hands of the police”.
With this mysterious footprint in mind, the reporters were nosing about eagerly for something which would point to another murderer. But they did not neglect Bob Thurlow, who had been charged with complicity in the burglary at Lady Morton’s house, for it was possible that the graver charge was only being held in reserve until the chain of evidence should be complete. Bob’s fellow-workers were convinced of his innocence. He was a burglar—or at least the accomplice of burglars—they now knew, but he was a “damn silly one”. He was a good-natured chap—look how he used to go dragging that fat dog about on the end of a strap to please the old lady! He hadn’t behaved like a murderer on the day of the crime.
How did murderers behave? the reporters enquired sarcastically. Wasn’t their main object to behave like innocent men? But Bob was too simple for that. Had he
been a murderer he would have behaved “queer”, and there had been nothing queer about him that morning. He had been seen by them at various times, going about his ordinary duties quietly and normally. Of course he had had something on his mind for some days; they had noticed that, and now knew that it was the affair of the brooch.
“And there you are,” the ticket collector had said to one of the Press men. “If he murdered the old lady to get the brooch back, why didn’t he get it?”
That, of course, was the problem, but one of the bright young men pointed out that everyone was barking up the wrong tree. It was absurd to suppose that Bob had any idea that Miss Pongleton would be carrying the brooch about with her. It was much more likely that he met her on the stairs by chance, and, naturally, spoke to her about the brooch, again begging her to restore it to him and not to give him away to the police. The journalist’s imagination was fired. He had a vision of the telling article he would write at some future date when Bob Thurlow had been convicted of the murder.
“Who knows what happened on that grim staircase on the fatal Friday morning? We can picture the young man’s entreaties; the old lady’s stern refusal; her rigid adherence to her conception of her duty as a citizen—an adherence which was to bring about her tragic death. We can picture the young man’s desperation”—mustn’t seem to justify him, though, thought the journalist—“his rising anger, anger which flamed into blind rage. Instinctively his hand goes to his pocket, the pocket in which is the leather leash thoughtlessly placed there on the last occasion when he returned the little dog to its unsuspecting mistress”—or perhaps snatched up from the hall on Thursday night when he talked to the old lady there; snatched up when no one was looking, perhaps already with some obscure idea of revenge—must look up that point....“He whips out the leash, takes a step upward and flings it round the old lady’s neck. She is old and feeble; her faint cries of despair are quickly stifled; the deed is done!”
Murder Underground (British Library Crime Classics) Page 6
