by Bruce, Leo
“Yes?”
“Did you go up to Mrs. Thurston’s room when she dressed for dinner?”
“No. I’m not a lady’s maid.”
“When did you first go in there?”
“It wasn’t long after dinner. I went to tidy up her things. She used to leave them anyhow when she dressed.”
“And did you notice then whether the lights in the room were all right?”
“Only the reading-lamp came on. The big light didn’t.”
“That was, say, round about ten o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Were the lights all right on the previous night?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“What did you do when you found there was a bulb missing?”
“Went to Mr. Stall, and asked him for one. He said he was busy and I must find it for myself.”
“And did you?”
“No. Why should I have? It was his place to give it me. He kept all the stores. So I thought to myself—well, if Mrs. Thurston asks about it, I shall tell her straight.”
“And did she ask about it?”
“When?”
“When she came up to bed. The cook has told us that you followed her up.”
“Yes, I did, but I didn’t go into her room.”
“Why not?”
Enid looked rather solemn, and hesitated. “When Mrs. Thurston got to her room, I was not far behind. I saw her open her door and go to switch on the main light. Then I heard her say, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I stopped where I was.”
“What kind of a voice did she use for that interestin’ question?”
“She seemed a bit startled.”
“Did she know that you were behind her?”
“I don’t think she realized it. Or at any rate, finding someone in her room had upset her too much to notice.”
“And did you hear any answer?”
“No.”
“So you waited to see who came out?”
“No I didn’t, then!” For the first time Enid sounded angry. “It was no business of mine who was there. It might have been any of the gentlemen. I didn’t know.”
“You know, however, that it wasn’t Fellowes?”
“It wasn’t him, because he came up to bed at that minute, and passed me on the landing.”
“What did you do next?”
“Started doing my bedrooms. Turning back the beds, and that. I went into Mr. Townsend’s room, then Mr. Williams’s.”
“Mr. Norris’s?”
“No. I saw him going into his room when I went into Mr. Williams’s. He was coming back from the bathroom. I was doing Dr. Thurston’s when I heard the screams.”
Lord Simon leaned back in his chair, stroking the whole length of his chin. Then suddenly he leaned forward. “Look here, Enid. You’re about the nearest thing we shall get to a witness of this crime. We want the truth. Now, tell me, who was in Mrs. Thurston’s room when she reached it that evening?”
She looked straight into his eyes. “Cross my heart, I don’t know, my lord.”
“And you don’t know who took the bulb out of its fitting?”
“No.”
At this point there was a sudden and rather violent interruption. The door was burst open, and a short dark man, with the sallow cheeks and burning brown eyes of the Mediterranean races, hurried into the room. He had a little black moustache, and undeniably the appearance of an atorante, an apache, an exotic sort of savage. He crossed straight to Enid, and his voice, which was entirely English, came as a surprise to me.
“Don’t say anything to them,” he advised her, “until you have a solicitor. Have they been asking you questions? You shouldn’t have answered. They can’t make you answer.”
Enid did not seem grateful for this consideration. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said.
“That’s not the point. They’d get anyone mixed up in their dirty crimes. Don’t you say anything, I tell you.”
Lord Simon had been examining the new-comer coldly. “Mr. Miles, I presume?” he said.
“Well?” assented Miles.
“Glad you’ve dropped in. You may be able to help us. I take it that you’ve heard of our little gathering from my man Butterfield?”
Butterfield, as though in answer, walked in. “I spoke to the person, as you instructed, my lord. I find his alibi quite in order. It was, as you knew, his free evening. He spent it, not at his own hotel, but at an inn called the Red Lion. He was actually partner to the Police Sergeant in a contest at a game known as Darts, my lord.”
“Darts,” repeated Lord Simon disgustedly.
“That was the name of the pastime, my lord. Darts. I made quite sure of my information. At ten o’clock he remained talking with a group of persons outside this public-house, until ten-twenty, when two of them accompanied him to his hotel. It appears that the winners in this game, my lord, have their—I beg your pardon for mentioning it, my lord—their beer paid for by the losers. This person and the Police Sergeant in partnership had been almost uniformly successful in the game, and in consequence in a very ambiguous condition. However, Miles was assisted to his hotel, where the kitchen-boy, who shares his room, undressed him, and states that he was in bed and asleep before eleven, and did not stir again. The Sergeant, it appears, was summoned here.”
“If I ‘ad known you was interested in Miles’s movements, I could ‘ave told you,” grumbled Sergeant Beef.
“Quite so. So you have an alibi, friend Miles. Well, well, it’s a useful sort of thing. What can you tell us, though?”
“Nothing. My sister never had anything to do with it, nor yet Fellowes. So you might as well stop questioning them.”
“You must admit that it’s rather odd, though, Miles, that the three of you, with such interesting records, should be handy when a crime’s been committed.”
“Don’t see what that’s got to do with it. There’s nothing against me since I came out. Fellowes has got a clean record for three years. And my sister’s never been in any trouble. I don’t think much of any detective,” he added, “who suspects people, just because they once had been in quod.”
“Nobody has mentioned the word suspicion, Miles. It was just the coincidence which interested me. You see, I’m not a great believer in coincidences. Who proposed that game of darts?”
“I did.”
“You met Sergeant Beef at the Red Lion, perhaps?’
“No. I went to his house.”
“You went and fished him out for a game?”
“Yes. What about it? He’s a good player. And there was two fellows coming over from Morton Scone who are hot stuff.”
“So it was for the honour of the village, as it were, that the Sergeant turned out? Thank you.”
M. Picon only asked him one question. “These gentlemen from Morton Scone, did they tell you anything of what you call in English the tittle-tattle of the place? Was there any news from Morton Scone?”
Miles looked honestly puzzled. “No. Not that I can remember. We didn’t have much time for talking. We were playing hard.”
There was silence in the room, broken only by the gentle snoring of Mgr. Smith. I had been examining Miles. Small, slick, rather furtive—here was a man who at least psychologically, I felt, could have been considered guilty. I had heard of the treachery of these people of mixed blood, and looking at him I could believe what I had heard. His long, rather yellow hand, lying on the back of his sister’s chair, could have used that knife as it had been used. And the almost feline agility of the man could, I felt, have overcome the inexplicable obstacles. But his alibi, as Butterfield had indicated, seemed unimpeachable, so that yet another suspect was abandoned in my mind.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’m not going to have my sister asked any more questions. Not without she has a solicitor here. She oughtn’t to have been asked any. It’s not fair, in a serious case like this.”
“All that we want, mon ami” put in M. Picon, “is the truth.”
“Well, you can find that out, without sking her any more. Come on, Enid.”
She rose without a word, and with a defiant glance back at us, Miles escorted her from the room.
“It is of no consequence,” said M. Picon. “There was nothing else she could tell us. So if she and her lover are to be believed, someone was waiting in the chambre of Madame Thurston when she reached it, yesterday.”
“And that someone,” I felt called upon to say, “could have been one of five. It could have been Norris, Strickland, Stall, or the Vicar. But it could also have been a someone of whose presence in the house we are unaware.”
“Or someone of whose existence we are unaware,” put in Sam Williams.
“That is, always presuming that Enid and Fellowes have not invented that person altogether,” suggested M. Picon. “We have only Enid’s and her lover’s word that he was there.”
“Yes, we don’t seem to be getting very much farther, do we?” smiled Lord Simon.
“Who knows?” returned M. Picon. “A little light here, a little light there, and soon, voilà! the sun is up and an is day.”
“It will be, too,” grumbled Sergeant Beef, “if you don’t get on with it.”
“Bien, bien, my friend Bœuf. But remember the English proverb, the more you haste, the less you speed, is it not? We come now to the young Strickland.”
CHAPTER 17
I WAS learning something about the effect of a crime on people, which I had never fully realized from merely reading about murder. It was the quite unexpected effect which suspicion, cross-examination, and the presence of skilled detectives, had on everyone concerned. These things had already broken down the preposterously theatrical manner of Stall, the butler, had made Fellowes, usually a cheerful young man, growl monosyllables in a threatening sort of way, and shown Enid as a girl of some character who could tell a story, or at least her own story, very well.
But I was still not prepared for the changes in my fellow-guests, least of all those in David Strickland. He had always seemed to me one of the few Englishmen to whom that expressive Americanism ‘hard-boiled’ might justly be applied. Even his appearance—bull neck, cheeks tanned and mapped with the red veins that are the bloom of alcohol, eyes hard and humorous—argued that he would be invulnerable to this sort of thing. I had expected to find him terse and rather gruff, perhaps, but able to answer any questions that were put to him quite satisfactorily.
Yet when he came into the room, I, who knew him well, was certain that he was actually feeling nervous. He nodded uncomfortably to the investigators and hurriedly lit a cigarette. Whether or not he had any connection with the crime, he had something to hide. I was sure of that.
“Sorry to have to ask you a lot of dam’-fool questions,” said Lord Simon, then scarcely paused before beginning to do so. “Ever changed your name?” he snapped.
“Changed my name?” repeated Strickland.
If only, I thought, I had more insight! Was he really surprised at the question, or was he gaining time?
“Yes. Deed poll, and all that sort of thing.”
“No. I’ve never changed my name. Why?”
“Oh—just wondered. Known the Thurstons long?”
“A few years.”
“Come here quite a lot, I suppose?”
“Yes. What’s the idea of all this, Plimsoll?”
“Curiosity, old boy. Do you happen to be hard up?”
Very coldly Strickland said, “No thanks. Why, did you want me to lend you something?”
Lord Simon was quite unperturbed. “April Boy came in, then?”
Strickland half-rose. “Is it any business of yours what bets I make?”
“Awfully sorry, old man. I suppose bets should be considered sacred. Between a man and his God—or his bookmaker. But my man Butterfield did happen to hear from a gentleman of similar calling to himself that you were in a tight corner this week. And if you want to put a hundred pounds on a horse at six to one, without anyone knowing it, I suggest your not using the extension of a telephone which has a man like Butterfield glued to the main.”
“I shall tell Thurston how damnable I think it, that this sort of snooping should go on in a house where one’s a guest.”
“Far more damnable things than that have gone on in the last twenty-four hours. There has been, for instance, a murder.”
“I can’t see that it justifies your hanging round listening to my conversations on the ‘phone.”
“Well, let’s waive the point, shall we? Then perhaps you will tell me just how matters stand between you and your bookies?”
‘I’m damned if I will.”
“Then I must tell you. That hundred you put on this morning was a last fling—an absolutely desperate shot. You’re up to the eyes in debt, you had no means of raising the money, and you shoved this on knowing that if the horse did not win you could not find the hundred. You know only one bookie who would take the bet. Well, you’ve won. I congratulate you.”
Strickland was calmer now, but sounded more dangerous. “Look here, Plimsoll, you’re here—though God knows who asked you here—to find out who murdered Mary Thurston, not to ferret out details of my betting “
“But suppose—mind, I’m only just supposin’—that there was some sort of relationship between them?”
“What the hell do you mean? How could there be?”
“What were you doing in Mary Thurston’s room before dinner last night?”
Strickland turned furiously to me. “I’ve never liked you, Townsend. I’ve always thought you a mean-natured sort of devil. But I didn’t think you’d join in this sneak’s game.”
I was about to explain that I should have had no right to keep any information like that to myself, when Plimsoll went on. “Well,” he insisted, “what were you doing there?”
“I had something to talk over with Mary Thurston.”
“And couldn’t she lend you the money?”
I expected Strickland to break out again—I even wondered if there would be a fight. But perhaps he was a little cowered by the fact that the investigators knew of his visit to the dead woman’s room. At all events, I was surprised to hear him say, “No,” in a deep voice, but quite clearly.
“So you stole her diamond pendant?”
Again no outward sign of anger. “No. She gave it to me. Or at least told me to pawn it. It would raise what I needed.” After a silence he went on. “I had told her on the ‘phone the day before that I was in a hole, and she had promised to help me. Now she said that she was awfully sorry, something unexpected had happened, and she couldn’t. I’ve no idea what she meant.”
“It’s funny,” mused Lord Simon, “that when you happen to be speakin’ the truth, you’re so much more convincin’.”
“That was the truth.”
“Indeed? Then your troubles were over?”
“It seemed so.”
“Until this morning—when you found that the police had charge of the pendant. Quite. Nothing that could be called ‘trouble’ had happened in the meanwhile, I suppose?”
“In the meanwhile Mary Thurston had been murdered.”
“Ah yes. We must get back to that. You were the first, I think, to go to bed?”
“I believe I was.”
“Bit unusual for you?”
“Perhaps. But I’d been up early that morning. I was dog-tired.”
“Are you always dog-tired after getting up early?”
“No. I was last night.”
“You had no other reason for going to bed so soon?”
“I was a bit bored. Townsend and the Vicar were rather much, in one room.”
I took no notice, of course, inwardly deciding that I would not allow myself to be drawn into suspecting Strickland merely because he was attempting to be rude to me.
“And yet although you were so tired, you did not go to bed?”
“I had several letters to write.”
“They must have been urgent.”
“They were.”
“When did you leave your room next?”
Without a moment’s hesitation Strickland said—“When I heard the screams.”
“Not before?”
“No.”
“Did you hear Mary Thurston come to bed?”
“Not consciously.”
“You heard no voices from her room?”
“No. The wireless was playing right underneath me.”
“You did not guess that anyone was in her room that evening?”
“Certainly not.”
“Was your window open?”
“I don’t think so.”
Lord Simon stared straight at Strickland for a moment, and then with a gesture indicated that he had no more questions to ask.
M. Picon said, “Monsieur Strickland, I have only one question to put to you. It is about those so horrifying screams. Perhaps you will be so good as to think carefully before you tell me what I want to know. It is a little matter, but so much depends on it. Where did those screams come from?”
I was less surprised at this ridiculous question than I would have been if I had not already heard it asked of Stall. Although I realized that I was unoriginal in doing so, and though I knew that my predecessors in the thought had always been proved ignominiously wrong, I could not help feeling that the little man had gone off the rails at last.
“Where did they come from?” repeated Strickland. “Why, from Mary Thurston’s room, of course.”
“You are sure of that?”
“But it never occurred to me to doubt it.”
Précisément. Is that why you are sure?”
“No. No, even when I first heard the screams, I knew they were from Mary Thurston’s room.”
M. Picon stared at him, as though he wanted even more confirmation, but apparently decided to let it go at that. Strickland walked over to the decanter and helped himself to a drink.
“I call this third degree,” he said with a rather sheepish grin. “I need a good stiff drink.”
“That is a sign of the cross-examination,” said Sam Williams.
“But not a sign of the Cross,” said Mgr. Smith, waking up for the first time in the last three-quarters of an hour.
Alec Norris, who followed, could tell us very little. His room was on the other side of the corridor, and he had heard nothing, he said, until he had heard the screams. He had seen no one after he had gone up to bed, except Enid, who had been going into Williams’s room as he had come back from the bathroom
