Gossage strolled to the window and stood gazing out into the moonlit grounds.
“The problem to me,” Crespin said, coming over to join him in contemplating the view, “is how anybody ever got in the study to kill Darnworth, with a solid window and the door locked on the inside.”
“I suppose,” Gossage said, “You’ve no idea what sort of an invention Mr. Bride was going to show Mr. Darnworth before he was murdered?”
“No. You’ll find Greg Bride a bit of a queer stick—Clever, mind you, when it comes to science. Quite a few scientific gadgets on the market are his, financed by Darnworth.”
Barry Crespin grinned ruefully and rubbed his untidy blond head, then the cigarette began bobbing up and down in his mouth as he began talking again.
“Unfortunately I haven’t got that brand of brains. I never invented anything in my life:”
“You say that Darnworth financed quite a few of Mr. Bride’s inventions? I wonder, then, why it was necessary for Miss Darnworth to become engaged to him in order to push him into her father’s good books.”
“Is that what you’ve been told?” Crespin threw back his head, and laughed silently. “I’d advise you to discount all that, inspector. Elaine became engaged to Greg for one reason only—because she loves him. She loves his science, his self-assurance, everything about him. But a girl like Elaine won’t admit on principle that she’s capable of loving a man, so she digs up an excuse.”
“I see,” Gossage said, nodding. “Then Darnworth and Bride got on all right together?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They had plenty of arguments—and maybe they had some rows in the privacy of that study when it came to business deals. Darnworth was a man who enjoyed rubbing everybody the wrong way, including his own flesh and blood. He was an egoist, weighted down with money, supremely confident of himself, and having a profound contempt for women. As I said at dinner, I never liked the way he treated Sheila.”
“Sheila,” Gossage said, “is a nice girl. Bright and sensitive. Clever, eh?”
“Yes.” Crespin nodded pensively. “She has one thing Bride has—creative power. Only hers is literary. She’s most thorough over her work—believes in realism to the last detail.”
“And she writes thrillers, eh?”
“Murder thrillers chiefly.” Crespin came forward, considering something carefully. “I don’t know if I ought to tell you this,” he said finally, “but I’ll risk it. Did you ever hear of D. J. Harper?”
“Why, yes. Pretty well known murder-mystery writer. I’ve read some of his books.”
“The ‘his’ should be ‘her’,” Crespin corrected. “To be exact—Sheila.”
CHAPTER NINE
ELECTOLIER SUSPICIOUS?
Gossage showed surprise.
“Then her work has been published? I’d got the idea, from the retiring way she goes about things, that she wrote in secret and then burned the manuscripts. Why the yarns I’ve read of Harper’s—Sheila’s—are very slick. Some of the methods used for killing are….” He broke off. “Why all the secrecy?” he asked.
‘I’m telling you this in confidence.” Crespin had a serious face. “The old man and family in general made such ridicule of her work when she first started, and wounded her pride so much, that she has never told anybody that her work has been accepted. She has an agent and her own bank account under a pen name. Outside of me—and the agent and publishers of course—nobody knows that she is a success. I beg you not to tell her that you know. She’d never forgive me.”
Gossage smiled. “You can rely on me, Mr. Crespin. Tell me, how long have you known her—or am I too inquisitive?”
“It began when I was in the services, and Sheila was in the services too, you know, just as Elaine was in the land army. I was doing a bit of mountaineering in Switzerland when the war threatened and I came back to join up. While abroad I met Sheila, but it was only a brief meeting with nothing serious about it, and then before I even had a chance to know her second name circumstances separated us. After the war she saw my radio advertisement in a newspaper. She knew my full name and sent for me to come and do a repair here. That was six months ago. Our friendship deepened and….” Crespin shrugged. “That’s how it was. Now we’re engaged….”
“Sheila has a good deal of faith in you,” Gossage said. “She believes you can do anything you want.”
“That’s a tall order, Mr. Gossage, but I do my best. I want to own a whole chain of radio stores. I want to extend my business as far as possible. I’m crazy about radio.”
“But not so crazy as to desert the faithful old portable gramophone, I see,” Gossage commented, nodding under the dressing table.
Crespin looked and then smiled. “Oh that! It’s an old portable I carry around with me, fitted with a repeater gadget. You know—plays the same record twice over at one winding. I’m a swing fan. I’ve got half a dozen records that I take everywhere with me.”
He went to the wardrobe and pulled out a golf bag full of clubs and six ten-inch records, all boogie-woogie music, so he said. He returned them very carefully to the wardrobe floor and closed the door again.
The chief inspector contemplated the golf bag in the corner for a moment, then he said: “Well, maybe we’d better be getting back downstairs. Thanks for the revelations, Mr. Crespin. And they’ll be safe enough with me.”
In the lounge, Gossage strolled over to where Sergeant Blair was tracing meaningless designs on a leaf of his notebook. The inspector said: “I’m going to take another look round the study. Come on.”
Blair jumped up promptly.
Inside the study with the lights switched on Gossage looked the door.
“Good.” he observed, relaxing. “This is better. I’m one of those modest coves who can never work while somebody is watching me”
He sat down in the swivel chair and studied the desk in front of him. Switching on the desk light he watched the sudden flood of brilliance that made the light of the twin-globed electrolier seem superfluous.
“A reconstruction, sir?” Blair asked, coming forward,
Gossage did not respond immediately. He was frowning at three small notches, obviously new, in the edge of the desk, just as if a sharp blade had hacked there.
He said: “I’m Darnworth, and here”—tapping the back of his head—“is where the bullet has hit me. It comes from above. What do you see?”
Sergeant Blair stooped so as to be at eye level with the back of Gossage’s head and looked above him. In his opinion this was simply going over old ground. There was only the panelled oak ceiling—solid, impregnably solid—and ten feet away the electrolier with its rosette flush with the ceiling.
“There’s nothing, sir,” he said.
“There’s got to be!” Gossage said. “We’ve stuck at a brick wall long enough. Somehow Darnworth was shot from above and we don’t leave here until we find out how.”
“Suppose,” Blair asked, “he was shot outside the study somewhere and then brought in here?”
“That only leaves us in the same mess,” Gossage growled. “How did the killer get out and leave the door locked on the inside? And the key in the lock at that! Besides, Darnworth always spent the hour from seven to eight in here. Why then should he be killed outside? It was in here all right, Harry, and it has a logical explanation. If we don’t want the A.C. jumping down our throats we’ve got to find out what that explanation is.” He glanced about the study and then nodded to the bell-push. “Give it a jab, will you?”
Blair obliged and then went over to unlock the door. After a while Andrews appeared, as silent and half bent in the middle as usual.
“Sir?”
“I’d like a stepladder, Andrews,” Gossage said, swinging round in the swivel chair to face him. “The tallest you have.”
“Yes, sir—right away.”
Just for a moment a change of expression crossed Andrews’ face. Perhaps it was puzzlement, perhaps suspicion. It was not easy to tell. In any event, he a
dded nothing further, but brought the stepladder.
Setting the ladder about a foot from the electrolier the inspector climbed to the step next to the top and looked about him.
“Nothing unusual up there, sir, is there?” Blair asked.
“With the deepest regret I answer no.” Gossage peered at the panelling intently in all directions. “There isn’t a hole big enough for a worm to get through, never mind a gun.”
He turned and looked at the electrolier, shading his eyes.
“Switch these darned lights off,” he grumbled.
Blair pushed the switch and the only light then came from the desk light.
“Solid—as—a—rock,” Gossage said, pulling at the copper tube jutting from the ceiling. “The rosette at the top holds it flush and level with the panels. I can’t shift it one way or the other. Pity. I had an idea that somehow….”
He stopped, sat down on top of the steps and drew hard at his pipe. For several minutes he sat thinking. Then he stood up again and for a second time went over the electrolier circumspectly, examining the rosette at the top of the tube flush with the panels, then the second rosette at the bottom of the tube. It was of smaller and of different pattern and colour to the one at the top. About an inch above it were the bases of the two semi-circular tubes that at their ends carried the now extinguished electric bulbs.
“I don’t see how the electrolier can have had anything to do with it, sir,” Blair remarked. “It’s obviously a fixture—”
“Not entirely,” Gossage interrupted him, peering at the top rosette again. “This top rosette isn’t screwed into the ceiling. That means the whole fixture must be held in place somewhere above.”
“Even so,” Blair persisted, “the desk is ten feet away from the electrolier. That is what you’re supposing, sir, isn’t it?”
“And at the bottom of this tube, where this lower rosette is, there’s a screw thread and nothing screwed on to it. Hmmm….”
Gossage came down the steps and stood pondering when he got to the bottom.
He said: “Most electroliers are screwed into the ceiling and this one isn’t. And that screw thread is very odd, too. I’d like a close look at the spot where this electrolier is fastened. Come with me.”
He locked the study door on the outside and walked to the lounge.
Sheila and Crespin, and Bride and Elaine were still there.
“Been on the prowl, Mr. Gossage?” Sheila inquired.
He nodded. “A habit I have, Miss Sheila. Tell me, does the top of the study electrolier connect to the boxroom or Mr. Bride’s bedroom?”
“Connect to it?” Sheila repeated vaguely. “How—how do you mean?”
“He means, Barry Crespin said, “that the electrolier in the study must connect to the floor of either the boxroom or Greg’s room—or just under the floor, rather. Which room is it?”
“I don’t know,” Sheila replied, shaking her head. “I’ve never bothered to find out about such things.”
“Perhaps Andrews will know,” the inspector said, and rang for the butler.
Andrews said the connection was with the boxroom. “I remember that a couple of years ago we had some trouble with that light,” he said. “There are three loose boards in the floor of the boxroom near the wall—the same wall which belongs to Mr. Bride’s bedroom.”
“And who has the key to the boxroom? You?”
“No, sir. Mrs. Darnworth.”
“Is there something valuable in that room?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, sir. All I know is that the mistress has the only key, and I would suggest that you apply to her for it, as the police had to do last night when they searched the house.”
Gossage looked at Elaine.
“Where is your mother, Miss Darnworth?” he asked.
“Probably getting ready for bed. She retires early every evening. She went upstairs a moment or two before you came back in here.”
Gossage jerked his head at Blair and they went up the stairs.
“Queerest household I’ve struck in some time, sir,” Blair confided. “Do you think that perhaps the boxroom contains a family skeleton?”
“How should I know? It’s common sense to suppose, though, that is isn’t just an ordinary boxroom if the old girl herself hangs on to the key. We’ll—”
At the end of the softly lighted corridor Preston was kneeling beside the wheelchair Mrs. Darnworth had been using that evening. He was apparently oiling the wheels.
“Just the chap I want,” Goasage said.
“What’s the matter?” Preston asked shortly.
“I want a word with Mrs. Darnworth,” Gossage said.
Preston got up with deliberate movements and stood looking at Gossage with dark distrust. “Y’haven’t got the decency to let a weary lady alone, have y’?” he demanded bitterly. “You have to go prying and snoopin’ and upsetting everybody just to satisfy some crazy theory y’ve got, I suppose. Well, I’ll tell y’this. Mr. Nosey Parker Gossage, you’re not seeing her. Not until tomorrow. See?”
“This,” Gossage answered, smiling, “won’t wait until tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TEN
DUST-COVERED BOXROOM
Preston looked sour. “Y’don’t have to be funny with me! I don’t trust you, or your kind, and as long as I’m paid to look after Mrs. Darnworth’s interests I’ll do it. She means a lot t’me does the old lady. Now let me get on with my work. She’ll be wantin’ this chair in her room tomorrow—well oiled.”
“I’ve little doubt of it, Preston, but I still mean to see her.” Gossage patted his thin arm encouragingly. “Come on, man, don’t let your loyalty turn you into a nuisance.”
Preston snatched his arm away, glowering.
“Keep y’hands off me, inspector! I don’t like that sort o’ thing! And I’d advise y’to get back downstairs—An’ stay there, what’s more! Whatever it is y’want can wait until the morning.”
“It can, can it?” Blair broke in angrily. “And I’ve had enough of this, sir,” he added, striding forward to Mrs. Darnworth’s bedroom door.
“Wait!” Gossage raised a hand. “Wait a minute, Harry. I’ll take care of this.” He turned back to the set-faced handyman.
“I don’t need to see Mrs. Darnworth,” the inspector said. “All I want is the key to the boxroom.”
“Why?” Preston snapped.
“That’s my business, Preston. And I’d suggest,” Gossage added, hard edges coming to his voice, “that you stop making yourself infernally awkward!”
“I’ve a duty to do, Mr. Inspector, an’ I’m doing it. That duty is to see that Mrs. Darnworth isn’t disturbed until tomorrow morning—that is once Louise has put her to bed.”
“Louise is in there, then?” Gossage asked. “Then Mrs. Darnworth is still awake?”
He waited no longer but knocked sharply on the door. Preston stood in morose silence, his mouth a hard, set line and the malevolent glitter still in his eyes.
The bedroom door opened silently perhaps three inches and the pale, blue-nosed face of Louise appeared.
“Yes?” she whispered. “What do you want? Oh, it’s you, Mr. Gossage! Is something wrong?”
“I don’t wish to disturb Mrs. Darnworth,” Gossage said, “but would you kindly ask her it I might have the key to the boxroom?”
“The key to—to the boxroom?” Louise was surprised. “But—what for?”
Gossage compressed his lips. This was becoming irksome—
“Louise! Louise!” It was Mrs. Darnworth’s sharp, commanding voice, from inside the room. “Ask Mr. Gossage to come in. I’d like a word with him.”
The girl glanced quickly behind her.
“Yes, Mrs. Darnworth,” she said, and opened the door wide enough for Gossage to enter, then closed it again behind her. His eyes moved to where Mrs. Darnworth lay in bed, propped up with pillows, a book under the reading lamp at her side.
“I had no wish to intrude, madam,” Gossage apologized.
> “I’m sure you hadn’t—but I overheard your request.” The cold blue eyes glanced at Louise. “That will be all for tonight, Louise,” Mrs. Darnwowth said. “I’ll ring if I need you.”
Louise left the room quickly and Gossage stood looking down on Jessica Darnworth.
“So you want the key to the boxroom, Inspector?” she said. “Why? Something to do with your investigation?”
“At this juncture I hardly know. I merely wish to satisfy myself as to how the study electrolier is fixed.”
She measured him, smiling tautly. “The electrolier? But you surely don’t think the shot which killed my husband came from that, do you?”
“All I want is the key,” Gossage replied. “I believe Divisional Inspector Craddock asked you for it last night?”
“He did, and I had Preston watch what went on while those men prowled about the boxroom.”
Gossage hesitated on a question but did not ask it.
“Very well,” Mrs. Darnworth said finally, “you shall have the key. Would you mind handing me that bag?”
He picked it up a small expensive handbag, from the bedside table and gave it to her. She took a fairly large and definitely old-fashioned key from a centre pocket.
“I’m letting you have this, Mr. Gossage,” she said, “for one reason only—because I want to help you find my husband’s murderer, as I told you earlier on today. I am satisfied that you will confine yourself purely to investigation and will not go beyond it, any more than the police did last night.”
Gossage smiled coldly. “I am sorry, Mrs. Darnworth, but I cannot guarantee to limit my curiosity. I might even turn the boxroom inside out.”
She hesitated for a long moment, then with the slightest of nods handed the key over.
“You are a man of the world, Mr. Gossage,” she said, and he could see the hard shell cracking and something of the real Jessica Darnworth emerging from behind it. “I like your frank approach, your easy geniality with us all despite a great deal of provocation—particularly from my elder daughter. I want you to understand that I really do want to help you find the murderer of my husband. Not because I had any regard for him: I hadn’t, not one jot! But because murder must be punished.”
The Crimson Rambler Page 6
