Dead Man Twice

by Christopher Bush

  Arrival at the Hall put an end to that argument.

  “Wait a minute!” said Wharton. “Before we go any farther, we’d better decide who’s to see Mrs. Claire. I think I’d better, don’t you? Then will you find out about that boat. And ask whoever’s in charge of the boats, if Hayles knew the lake pretty well. Also… what’s the breeze like, Potter? About the same as last night?”

  “Just about the same, sir.”

  “Right! Then you might try out those patent rowlocks and test that point about the oars not slipping. Tow out another boat if necessary, and see if it’d move by itself through the weed patch. And Potter might have a general hunt round for anything suspicious.”

  He left the others at the garage turn, and entered the Hall.

  “Any message from Mrs. Claire yet?” he asked the footman.

  “Yes, sir. She’s on the way now.”

  “Good! And now I want to use your telephone.”

  What he had in his mind may be gathered from the sequence of telephoned instructions. Detective-inspector Eaton was to be at the junction of the Ripley Norton and main roads at 10.30. The man who’d done Hayles’s alibi at Chingford was to go at once to the garage and find out if the car was still there. Norris himself was to see the bank manager and find out if any large sum of money had recently been drawn out. Then Wharton rang up Mrs. Hayles. Everything, he assured her, was going fine. Did she think it was his hat?… It was! Splendid! Then they’d traced him as far as Marfleet and in a few hours he’d probably be found. There was, of course, the chance that, having lost his memory, he’d go somewhere else where the subconscious prompted him. Where’d he usually gone for his holidays, for instance? Always in the country? Never abroad? Oh, twice at Dijon! Michael France had once trained there. Well, the great thing was to keep cheerful. Just a little patience and everything’d be all right.

  Mrs. Claire arrived a little before time and Wharton, with his door ajar, heard her enter.

  “Morning, Bissett! What’s all this trouble about Mr. Hayles?”

  “They think he’s lost his memory, madam, and is wandering about the country.”

  “He was here last night?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Where’d he sleep, Bissett? Have they found out?”

  Apparently she moved away without waiting for an answer. Then came Bissett’s voice. “There’s a gentleman—a Mr. Wharton, madam, in the lounge. He’s been waiting some time.” Then Wharton heard him move away—to do the job Wharton had rehearsed with him.

  He himself made up his mind that his attitude towards Mrs. Claire should be one of utter forgetfulness of the past twenty-four hours. His manner, as he came forward, was a delicate blend of the solicitous and the gratified.

  “Good-morning, Mrs. Claire. Too bad of us dragging you down here so early. You see, we’re rather worried about Mr. Hayles.”

  She was looking rather subdued; at least there was none of the quickness of movement, the haphazard cheeriness, and that pleasant recognition of the obvious admiration she was causing, that usually marked her. The scene with her husband must have been a frigid one and at the moment she was probably still resentful, though far too shaken to think of obstinacy or reprisals.

  “You see,” Wharton explained, “we want his help very badly. And his mother’s dreadfully worried. Have you heard all about it?”

  In any case he gave her a hasty and much edited account of what had been happening. When he got to the discoveries at the boathouse, she closed her eyes wearily and Wharton got to his feet; then, as he came forward concernedly, she opened them again and gave a wan smile.

  “Isn’t it all dreadful! And all happening at once!”

  “Don’t you worry about Mr. Hayles,” said Wharton. “There’s a good chance he may be alive after all. Will you excuse me a moment?” He pushed the bell. “There’s just one little thing you can do for us. Mr. Hayles left a note here for you. Ah! here’s Bissett with it. What we think is that it may have some sort of a clue as to where he is. Will you read it?… and then let me see it?”

  She slit the envelope mechanically and ran her eyes over the note. Then her face coloured violently. Then she went deadly pale. As she leaned back in the chair, Wharton motioned to the footman and took the note from her limp fingers. Bissett beckoned outside, and Warren—the maid with the medieval hair—came in quickly. Wharton took the note over to the writing table.

  Dorothy my dear, when you get this I shall be dead. You have never understood, but now you know. Everything I have done has always been for you, even when I listened at the top of the stairs last Friday night.

  Think only the good things about me and may you always be happy. Burn this and forget it, just as I shall soon have forgotten it.

  Kenneth.

  In the holder on the table was paper of the same make and he quickly made a copy. Behind the chair, Bissett was standing, self-conscious or anxious, and the maid was kneeling with a bottle of smelling salts. Mrs. Claire seemed to be slowly recovering. Wharton placed the copy on the table within reach of her hand.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Claire! Don’t worry! Everything will turn out for the best. The next time I see you, there’ll be some good news.” He gave a cheerful smile, then moved out to the lounge hall with Bissett at his heels. A questioning look and the footman handed over an envelope.

  Franklin and Potter were waiting outside and Wharton’s deductions had been correct. The oars did not slip out, and the boat, of its own volition, could not move through that weed belt. The boat used by Hayles had been laid up as late as two days previously. Further, Hayles had spent a good many hours on that lake, fishing and experimenting with a mainsail. He and Mrs. Claire had often gone down there on a summer evening with a gramophone, but lately the weeds had got too troublesome and in the summer Mr. Claire intended to set a gang to work to clear them. Nothing whatever in the nature of a further clue had been discovered by Potter.

  * * * * *

  At the Ripley cross roads, Eaton was given his instructions. Young was to be questioned most carefully on his dealings with Hayles, and dates were to be obtained if possible. After that, the Ripley Norton household was to be interrogated as to the use of the poison and a missing bottle. Any general gossip might also be useful.

  Up to then on the homeward journey Wharton had been, for him, remarkably taciturn. The talk with Eaton seemed, however, to have cleared his mind. Franklin also had felt little desire to talk as he sat puzzling his wits over that final note Hayles had written. One coincidence did strike him.

  “That’s the second confession in this case,” he remarked, “and both a bit wide of the mark. One for the wrong man, and the other for a non-starter.

  “Now what about my theory of Hayles?”

  “Dead plumb right!” said Franklin. “He certainly wanted an audience—and soft music. All that part about Mrs. Claire—perfectly nauseating! Whines and forget-me-nots and… treacle!” He gave a nod of satisfaction. “Somehow I never quite cottoned to Hayles.”

  Wharton raised his eyebrows at that but made no comment. His remarks about the note, however, were much more to the point. “It gives a motive—that’s the big thing! He suggests to her that he heard all that Usher heard… and what it implied. Then he hints that he did something for her sake—removing France, shall we say? Finally the request to burn the letter, shows her he did something that nobody must even suspect.”

  “Yes—but he didn’t kill France.”

  “I know he didn’t… but it’s all there, if we can join the pieces together. The connecting link is that confession in France’s handwriting. If Hayles wrote it—as you suggested he might have done, after that autograph album practice—then it should be plain sailing. That report’ll be in when we get back. And that reminds me. Would you mind going over again what happened that evening you were with the Claires?”

  That recital was ending as the car pulled up outside the cottage at Maidenhead.

  “Got to have another word with that
nurse,” explained Wharton, as he got out. When he returned, five minutes later, he was obviously satisfied.

  “Just had to make sure about that—er—intimate confession of Mrs. Claire’s. The nurse says it’s positively all correct.”

  Franklin, as a non-family man, saw nothing of any importance in the assurance. What interested him was the General’s very definite relief.

  “More elimination, George?”

  “Only Mrs. Claire.” He shook his head with the portentous gravity of the much experienced. “Funny how you come back to the old lessons you learned in the nursery! Women—cherchez la femme, and so on. Mrs. Claire gets her back up, snaps her fingers and says she will go to a night club in spite of the sudden and curiously puritanic views of her husband. The sequel is you and me… here in this car!”

  “You’re getting a regular dramatist!” smiled Franklin.

  Wharton chuckled and dug him in the ribs. “You’ll see my name in the West End one of these days. What’s the time?”

  “Just gone half past.”

  “You going to the office?”

  “Must. Unless there’s something frightfully important you want done.”

  “No, it’s all right. There’ll be a conference tomorrow, early. Just ourselves. However, I’ll let you know about that.” He blew his nose while Franklin, out of his experience, waited for what was coming next. “And by the way, if Mr. Travers should have any news about Claire, you might look it over. Very impressionable—those amateurs… but you and I might find something to get our teeth into.”

  Franklin nodded comprehendingly. The General produced an envelope from his breast pocket and passed it over.

  “I got the footman to get me these—from her dressing table or whatever she uses.”

  Franklin fingered the long, silky hairs.

  “Whose are they?”

  “Mrs. Claire’s maid’s. She’s got a head like Joan of Arc’s in the picture books… and a voice like a dairy maid.”

  Franklin frowned. “Without being in the least degree lascivious, George, what’s her body like?”

  “You mean—er—what might France have thought of it?” He shrugged his shoulders. Franklin tapped at the window for the car to stop.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE TALE OF A CLOAK-ROOM

  Franklin knew that conference of Wharton’s reminded him of something and suddenly remembered what—a distribution of Sunday School prizes without an audience. The General himself at the lounge table, with his old-fashioned glasses drooping nearly to the walrus moustache, looked beneficent and just the least bit obvious. On the table were assortments of notes, a pile of autograph albums, and still in its gaudy wrapper, a copy of Two Years in the Ring. Less pious were the pistol that had shot France, and the decanter and siphon. At the ends of the table sat Franklin and Norris—appendages that rounded off the whole.

  Wharton peered round benignantly over the glasses. “Mr. Franklin might like to know where we stand with regard to Hayles. On the Saturday morning early, he withdrew from his private account at Baker Street the sum of one hundred and five pounds, leaving a balance of five pounds only. The day he disappeared from his flat, he went straight to Chingford, where he sold the proprietor his car for less than half what he gave for it a year ago. Details don’t matter at the moment.” He peered round again. “I think that leaves no doubt as to the intentions of Mr. Hayles. However, we’re looking for him, memory or no memory. A good man—Prentiss—has gone to Dijon, via Paris. If necessary we shall give information to the Press, but between ourselves I don’t think we ought to scare him just now. We’ll let him think he’s genuinely dead.”

  “Why not tell the Press he’s dead?” suggested Franklin.

  “Well, I’ve rather suggested it already,” said Wharton apologetically. “Now to the case proper—from the beginning. First the anonymous letters and who sent them. I’m absolutely satisfied the real Lucy had nothing whatever to do with it, and France himself was satisfied about the same thing. Now then, who wrote them?”

  “The man who made the entry.”

  “Very well. Then who made the entry? Not a confederate of either Hayles or Claire, because either of them could have provided him with a key. Certainly not a professional housebreaker; he’d have run like hell as soon as he heard voices. Who could have done it? And have we got to enlarge the circle of inquiry? And if so, in what direction?”

  “Any professional enemy of France?” suggested Franklin. “Say somebody in line for the title with him out of the way.”

  “Don’t think so. We’ve talked that over with those in the real know. There’s nobody—at least in England. I may say we’re still making inquiries in that direction.… Nothing to suggest? Very well then; we’ll leave that for a bit. Something may lead back to it, then perhaps we’ll see it from a different angle. Now we’ll go on with France’s movements on the day of the murder, after Usher saw him last.

  “He lunched in Coventry Street and on his way to town called up at Willaments of Baker Street and ordered those roses, with very strict instructions that they were to be delivered at the front door between half-past five and six—which they were. While the boy was there, another delivery was made, probably the biscuits. The ordering of those we haven’t traced. As he was alone in the house, we might assume he didn’t give a damn for the anonymous letters. He watched another man eat at the Girandole, as Franklin told us, and just before eight was at the Paliceum. The entry to the lounge must therefore have been made after he left the house and before his return. That’s all plain sailing. Now let’s review the situation in the light of what Hayles wrote to Mrs. Claire in his dying confession.

  “Hayles definitely states that he did something for Mrs. Claire, on the strength of what he heard upstairs on the Friday night. Our other evidence shows that he’d been suspicious of France’s attitude towards Mrs. Claire, and I suggest therefore that what he heard on the Friday, merely crystallised what he’d brooded over in his mind for some days before. He got the poison some time before, for instance. He got it from Young on the plea that he wanted to do away with a dangerous cat. The cat at Ripley Norton did actually die of poison the week-end he was down there, but the servants say it wasn’t dangerous or bad tempered. We’re practically agreed that Hayles put this poison into the decanter for Hayles to drink. When he put it, we don’t know. It might have been before he left on the Saturday morning, or he might have come back later and done it.”

  “By the way, sir, if he heard those arrangements on the Friday, he must have taken into account the fact that Mrs. Claire might have come round to the house before he’d taken that drink. Then why shouldn’t he have poured her out one?”

  “He wouldn’t!” said Wharton quickly. “Mr. Franklin told me she never touched whisky—and Hayles knew it. However, to go on. The poison in the decanter involves the certainty that Hayles’d have to return in sufficient time on the Sunday to fake the suicide. That would need new whisky, and needless to say, we haven’t been able to trace the purchase by him of the particular proprietary brand required to refill the decanter. But we do know that he wouldn’t let Usher unpack his bag at Martlesham, and when Usher went into the room while Hayles was out, the bag was packed again—and locked! And remember that Hayles denied that he was in a desperate hurry to get back to town.

  “Now to the crucial point. When he did get to number twenty-three on the Sunday, he expected to find the body of France. Suppose the body had been discovered before he got there—and he had to allow for that—he’d have had to leave nice and handy the confession France was supposed to have written, so that whoever discovered the body might think it was suicide. Where did he leave it?”

  “Personally,” said Franklin, “I regard it as vital that Hayles should have got back in time to fake the suicide; otherwise he’d have to face a nasty inquiry as to why a man who wanted to poison himself should dope the whole decanter, and not the tot he was going to drink.”

  “That may be so—but it’
s begging the question. Shall we say he put the confession on the mantelpiece where France wouldn’t notice it. If the death were discovered prematurely, then on his arrival Hayles would have ‘discovered’ the confession himself. Let’s take that as hypothetical. But there’s something else. There was on the desk of the secretaire bookcase a blotter, which—the experts are positive—was actually used for blotting that confession. You’ll say that Hayles put it there for the sake of creating verisimilitude but—”

  “That blotting paper had no other marks on it?”

  “None. It was a virgin sheet except for the reverse marks of the last few letters of the confession. And now you’re going to be very annoyed with me! I wanted to talk about all this to see where we stood, assuming certain things. But all that house of cards falls to the ground. The confession was actually written by France, and so, of course, were the marks on the blotting paper, in the strictest sense! The experts refuse to consider any other suggestion!” After that, Wharton took off his glasses and leaned back in the chair.

  “Do you know, I rather anticipated that,” said Franklin. “It looked too easy the other way.” He hook his head. “All the same, I don’t see any sense n France writing it. Did he really intend to commit suicide or did he—I’ve got it! Do you think he wanted to convince Mrs. Claire that he did intend to commit suicide. He definitely intended to induce her to spend the remainder of the night with him. Could the confession have been a species of blackmail?”

  “I don’t follow,” said Wharton. “Make it more concrete.”

  “Well, France says to Mrs. Claire: ‘If you don’t agree to this, I’ve made up my mind that life isn’t worth living any longer. I’m going to do myself in and here’s the note to prove it!’ Crude, I admit, but there it is. He had that note all ready in the secretaire. He was shot against the secretaire, mind you! And that’s what he left Mrs. Claire for; to get it or see it was handy. Now when Somers came in, he had some reason to go to the secretaire and there he saw the confession, which he took with him to the lounge to puzzle over. The rest we know.”