Case for Three Detectives

by Bruce, Leo

  “When he got downstairs he found, rather to his irritation, that he had about two hours to wait before his next step, and it was then, in an excess of enthusiasm I think, that he cut the telephone wires. I don’t think this had figured in Strickland’s instructions, for Strickland would have seen that the sooner the police and the doctor were on the spot, the better. But-Fellowes, who had experience but no finesse, just thought that in a general sort of way, it was worth while holdin’ ’em oft for a bit. So he snipped the jolly old communications.

  “Everything, unfortunately, went to schedule. Mrs. Thurston said good night to you all, and entered her room for the last time. She found Strickland there. She did not find the strange man in the mask who, as Fellowes fondly thought, would await her. But merely her stepson. ‘What do you want?’ Enid heard her ask, in a rather startled, but not frantically startled, voice. He had come earlier that evening to beg—and had taken all she could give him without risking the notice of her husband. What more could he want? She found, too, that the strong light in her room was out of order. So that the man standing there in the half-darkness was a little startling.

  “Meanwhile Fellowes was quietly establishing an alibi downstairs. Whoever robbed Mrs. Thurston of her jewellery, he and Strickland had argued, would appear afterwards to have been waiting for her when she came to bed. So he said very pointedly to the cook, ‘Hello, it’s past eleven,’ and apparently without hurry left her. That would remind her in the future that it was after, and not before, her mistress went up to bed that Fellowes followed. Only he had not the time to make it much after.

  “He must have grown anxious during the next ten minutes as he leaned out of the window of his bedroom, waiting for Strickland to appear at Mrs. Thurston’s window, down to his left. And it is a bit gruesome to wonder what caused that delay, and what took place in the dimly lighted room beneath. And then, when Fellowes heard those screams, a less cool type than he might have lost his head. He didn’t. He waited, and almost instantly Strickland gripped his rope, pulled the window after him, swung across to his own window and was gone. In a moment the rope was hauled in, stuffed in the tank, where, probably, he had already concealed the other one which had proved to be unnecessary, so that both Strickland and Fellowes were outside Mrs. Thurston’s bolted door almost as soon as you were.

  “Perhaps it was not until that night that they realized their most serious blunder. They had thought of everything —finger-prints, alibis, and witnesses—but they had failed to provide for the removal of the rope. It was a stupid and an elementary mistake, but was there ever a murderer who did not make a stupid and elementary mistake? And Fellowes had the additional remorse of finding himself a party to a murder. But for obvious reasons he kept quiet.

  “He wanted, however, two things. One was to dispose of those ropes. This hope was frustrated when next morning I put my hand on one of the rotten things, and Monsignor Smith came across the other. His second desire was to get hold of Strickland alone, and have a reckoning with him. He did not know, he does not know yet, that he was deliberately fooled. He has no idea that Strickland expects to gain a great deal by Mrs. Thurston’s death. He probably thinks that Strickland’s disguise lapsed in some way, and that Strickland murdered Mrs. Thurston to conceal his identity. While Strickland has taken great care to avoid being alone with Fellowes. Even when he asked Dr. Thurston for the use of his car, and found that Fellowes meant to drive him in it, he had the presence of mind to persuade Alec Norris to accompany them. So up to the present he has succeeded in escaping a reckoning with his accomplice, and on that, at least, I think he is to be congratulated. For though Fellowes strikes me as a roughish bird, I don’t think he would have taken up murder as a hobby if he had known what he was doing, and I don’t think he’ll easily forgive the bloke that let him in for it.

  “As for the girl Enid, I’m pretty sure she knew nothing of the idea on hand at the time, and I don’t think she suspects her young man of bein mixed up in it. She spoke the truth when we asked her questions, except when we asked her if she had been out with Fellowes in the car that afternoon, and a lie in answer to that was natural enough. Perhaps someone else”—he glanced at Mgr. Smith—“may have reason to think she knew everything. I’m inclined to think not.

  “As for Miles—all he knew was that there was a little scheme afoot to grab the tomfoolery …

  “’E means the jewellery,” put in Sergeant Beef, seeing me looking puzzled by Lord Simon’s second use of this queer word.

  “He may even have known the way it was to be done. But he had nothing to do with it. Not he. And Mr. Miles went in for the very best quality alibis, as you see. He invited the Sergeant to hurl the honest javelin with him.

  “And what about Stall, say you. What about him, say I, remembering Ben Gunn and all that sort of thing. Stall was a nasty sort of blackmailer, but he regrets this unfortunate affair as much as you do, if for rather different reasons. In another fortnight he would have gone. Jolly old swallow, Stall would have been. With his nest pretty well feathered. Do swallows feather their nests? Let’s hope so, it sounds well. And now this untimely bit of murderin’ has turned up, and let the whole tribe of cats out of his unpleasant carpet-bag, and he faces a stiffish sentence. Well, well, the best-laid schemes of mice and men, and all that. Aren’t we getting zoological, Butterfield?”

  “Your lordship’s phraseology has certainly taken an almost biological turn,” assented Butterfield gravely, from his place near the door.

  “Then the Vicar. In deference to Butterfield, I won’t say he had bats in the belfry. But that’s about what it comes to. He had purity on the brain. And when, that evening, Mrs. Thurston, quite unconscious that he was on the snoop for such details, told him that she was very fond of young Fellowes, it set the feller’s brain spinnin’ like a top. No wonder he walked about that orchard for half an hour. If he hadn’t heard the screams he might have been there all night.

  “As for Norris—there is no reason to doubt his perfectly simple story. That mild attack of hysterics of which you all make so much, was natural enough to a feller of his type. It must have been disconcertin’ for him to have been interrupted in the middle of writin’ one of his fearfully intense novels by something as vulgar as a murder, and we must sympathize with him.

  “And there you have it—lock, stock and jolly old barrel. I expect Monsieur Picon will hang a few more trimmin’s on it, and I look forward to hearin’ him. Meanwhile … yes, Butterfield. Another brandy, I think.”

  CHAPTER 28

  I HAD guessed that one of the ‘trimmin’s’ which M. Picon would add to Lord Simon’s brilliant reconstruction of the crime would concern the parlourmaid Enid, in whose movements he had shown such a keen and sleuthy interest. But I could not see what more there was to be said. Lord Simon had been so thorough and so complete, forgetting not the most trivial point, and accounting for every known fact, that there seemed little left for M. Picon to divulge. However, the little man seemed eager to talk, and excited over something he had to communicate to us, so that we all leaned back and prepared to hear him.

  “That,’ he said to Lord Simon, “was an interesting theory. Very ingenious, mon ami. I have listened with plaisir to every word of it. Unfortunately, however, it is incorrect, right from its commencement. The gentleman called Strickland, so genial and so sport if, as the good Bceuf has told us, is as innocent of the murder as you or I.”

  I cannot exaggerate the effect of this startling declaration. Lord Simon was, of course, the least concerned, and sipped his brandy imperturbably. But his man Butterfield gave a visible start, and turned pale. It was evident that never before had he heard his employer’s theories questioned by anyone but police inspectors, unintelligent spectators, or criminals. That the celebrated M. Picon should make such a blunder seemed incredible to him. Williams and I sat up violently, and even Mgr. Smith showed a mild interest.

  “But have no fear,” continued the foreign detective, “I, Amer Picon, will revea
l everything to you. Everything. Are you ready? Allez … hoop!

  “I have told you, have I not, that when there seems to be no motive in the brain, one must look in the heart. This was no murder of the intellect—though by its very simplicity it was difficult to reconstruct, but a crime of passion. You are surprised, is it not? Eh bien, my friends, I also have had my surprises in this case.

  “Let us examine, if you please, this household as it was before this violent occurrence. We have the genial Doctor Thurston, an English gentleman who, like so many of your English gentlemen, sees no farther than his nose. We have Madame Thurston—very kind, very easy-going, and a little, one must say, stupid. We have the butler, Stall, what you call in English ‘a sly dog’, eh? And the so competent cook. Then we have the young man Fellowes, who knows what it is to be inside a prison, and the girl Enid, of mixed blood and rather unfortunate antecedents. Voilh—the caste.

  “Now what goes on? There is here the eternal triangle, n’est-ce pasl Madame Thurston is attached to the young chauffeur, who in his turn is in love with Enid, who is much enamoured of him. And there you have the beginning of the trouble. My friends—beware of that little triangle. He is dangerous.

  “All is secret. The good Doctor must know nothing, nothing at all. Madame Thurston may take the automobile ride in order to chat with the young man she adores, but it must be surreptitious. Enid may know all, for her lover assures her that she had no need to doubt, but she must not let Madame Thurston see that she knows anything. And when the butler, Stall, has stolen the so fateful and incriminating letter from Madame Thurston to the chauffeur and uses it to blackmail the lady, she herself must be silent to Fellowes, and conceal from him what is going on, lest he attacks the butler, and all is exposed, all is ended. You see what secrets were here?

  “Two people besides the sly Stall are suspicious of Madame and her chauffeur—the cook and the Vicar. But the cook is quite satisfied with her situation, and very sensibly decides that it is no business of hers, though, as she told us, there were things of which she did not approve. And the Vicar, he is not sure. He is fond of espionage, the good Vicar, and presently he will know more.

  “Meanwhile, like many households, this household goes on. Underneath the routine, Madame Thurston conceals her love, and the torture of being blackmailed. Enid conceals the furious fire of her jealousy, which persists in spite of all her lover says. The chauffeur conceals from the middle-aged ladv who loves him his real love for the girl. The blackmailer conceals his activities from all, save from Madame Thurston. And everyone conceals everything from Doctor Thurston. Voih—an atmosphere! All have secrets. But the household goes on like any other.

  “And why does it so? Because, my friends, there is money. For the servants there are good wages now, exceptionally good. And there is the will which shall make all of them rich one day. And for money much can be endured. So it goes on, and the time draws near to this fatal week-end, in which matters must reach a climax.

  “Now everyone is approaching what you call the breaking point. But most of all the chauffeur. Three years he has worked here, and is not yet married to Enid. He wants to take a little inn. He has some money saved, but not enough. Enid, too, wants to go with him. But how can they? If they leave this situation they may not find another where they would be together. When we are in love we are slaves. They must stay here and work, and he must be pleasant with madame, and she must endure her pangs of jealousy. There is no escape, it seems.

  “But there is the will. Are we not forgetting the will, the little trick which Madame Thurston has played on her servants? Voila—a chance! If madame now were to die suddenly, of cancer or consumption, say, all is settled, all is solved. They would be rich, they could buy their little inn, there would be no more jealousy for Enid, and no more cleaning the car for Fellowes. If only … but why dream? Madame is strong. Madame may live for thirty years. Why dream?

  “Yet, why not? If anything were to happen to madame, now. That would help. An accident—a fatal accident. Already the ideas are alive. Already the beginning of a plot. And as for time, when better than this week-end, when so many guests are here? All that must be found is the way. That is most important—the way to cause that so regrettable fatal accident, without any possibility of the stupid police interfering afterwards. That is the great question.

  “And, messieurs, we who know something of these matters know only too well that when all else is determined, a way can be found. Only too soon. So we find Fellowes the chauffeur determined that Madame Thurston shall meet with this accident and the week-end approaching. It was into the atmosphere of this potential crime that you came for your week-end.

  “The chauffeur had been a sailor. When I first perceived that among the tattoo marks on his arm was a representation of the Southern Cross, I was convinced of that, and he has since admitted it. And to me came the idea, the little plain idea, that a sailor might climb a rope. It was of the simplest, this idea, such as a little child might have. But beware always of the complicated. The idea was correct. It might have been otherwise, but as you will see it was correct.”

  At this point Sam Williams broke in rather impatiently. “But, Monsieur Picon,” he said, “we’ve already discussed over and over again the possibility of anyone having climbed out of that window, and it has been proved that it was not possible in the time …”

  “Patience, if you please,” said M. Picon; “step by step, if you will listen. I, Amer Picon, will tell you all. Eh bien, here we are with a chauffeur who can climb a rope. But of what use is that? He must have an alibi. No amusement to commit a murder, and be caught escaping by means of a rope. Pas du tout. It must be done better. How? Ah, then comes the great idea. The chauffeur sees just how the pauvre Madame Thurston may meet her accident, how he and Enid may inherit some of her money, and escape without ever being suspected. A big idea, this time! And one to deceive nearly all detectives. All but Picon. For Picon, too, has an idea sometimes.

  “The room must be a little dark, and the chauffeur must go to see madame. That, we are told, was not so unusual. He must bolt the door. That, too, may have happened before. His rope hangs at the window, suspended firmly from the apple-room the window of which is directly over the opening of Madame Thurston’s room. All is prepared. He must advance to madame. That, also, he has done before. Then, not the embrace, but vite, the knife. Tcchhk! It must be done. In silence and swiftly he must sever the jugular vein. Then, hoop! On to the rope. The sailor’s climb to the apple-room. The concealment of the rope. The descent to the kitchen. The conversation with the cook. Voila un menu!

  “Meanwhile, the young woman, Enid, does her part. She is in the room of Dr. Thurston, which is divided from that of Madame Thurston by a wall. Near this wall she stands. She waits until her lover has descended to the kitchen, and the murder is done. Then Ow! Ow! she screams. It is Madame Thurston being murdered. For who can distinguish the screams of two women? One may know the voice of each very well, but the scream, that is different. No one can tell. So near to the wall, too, it must seem to come from the poor lady’s room. Then—all will arrive. The door will be burst open, the crime discovered. Who has done it? Certainly not the chauffeur, for was he not talking with the cook? Certainly not Enid, for does she not arrive at the door immediately? Certainly not Miles, for was he not with Bœuf? Such was the plot, Intelligent, n’est-ce pas! But not quite intelligent enough for Amer Picon.

  “And now we see what came of that plot. Allons! Voyons I A la gloire!”

  CHAPTER 29

  “FIRST arrives Monsieur Strickland who, as milord Plimsoll had taken such pains to show us, was Mrs. Thurston’s stepson. He is what you call in your so expressive idiom, ‘broke to the wide’. He has written to his stepmother in advance that he will need some money, but urgently. And she, who is generous and good, has arranged to overdraw yet another two hundred pounds for him. But helas! what says the bank manager? Without security no more, Madame. She takes the two hundred pounds, and retur
ns home.

  “Then he arrives. ‘It is all right,’ perhaps she tells him, ‘I can give you the money!’ And he is relieved of his troubles. But sshh! She has spoken too loud. The butler has discovered that she has this sum. He has already blackmailed Madame Thurston with the letter that she wrote to Fellowes, and now determines to obtain also this money. During the afternoon he sees her and she has to give him the two hundred pounds. It is a pity.

  “Then, after that so intelligent discussion of the literature of crime, you go to dress for dinner. Madame Thurston sends for Fellowes and tells him to set the trap for the rat. That is good for Fellowes. It is not necessary, but it is good. And Monsieur Townsend perceives Monsieur Strickland emerging from Madame Thurston’s room. She has given him her pendant to help him through his troubles. She is kind, this Madame Thurston.

  “During dinner the chauffeur, just as Lord Simon has explained, fetches the ropes. Lord Simon has obliged me by perceiving how he brought them into the house unobserved. I had myself wondered at that. But it is simple. He used the front door. He goes to the chambre des pommes. He suspends the rope. He goes to Madame Thurston’s room and removes the light. Why? She must foresee no danger. It is necessary that she should be silent. The semi-darkness will assist him. All upstairs is now ready. He descends, and sneep! the telephone wire is cut. Why? The Doctor must not come too soon, or the fact may be discovered that she was murdered earlier than the screams.

  “He goes now to the kitchen. Dinner is over. Presently the guests begin to go to bed, or to go home. The door of the kitchen is ajar. Why? Because one must know when Madame Thurston goes to bed. Eleven o’clock draws near. Ah! At last! Madame has left the lounge. Enid rises at once and follows her mistress to her room. She explains that she cannot get another light bulb. She is sorry. Does Madame require her further? Mais non, madame is secretly expecting the chauffeur and requires no one. Enid says good night, with a smile. It is also good-bye.