The Department of Dead Ends

by Roy Vickers

  Then Stentoller could have killed Haddenham with that sword. But did he?

  Rason decided to go away now. He had got confirmation of the cloakroom attendant’s statement about the sword; but, he reflected gloomily, this in itself proved nothing.

  ‘Well, thanks very much, Sir Reginald. I’d better give you back this sword.’ Rason took a couple of steps forward, fouled the sword belt. That reminded him of something else the attendant had said. No harm in checking up.

  ‘Did Mr Stentoller carry it like this,’ he asked, ‘with the – er – all this – dangling?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all! I took it off and rolled it. He carried it in his pocket.’

  ‘Hm! Good pocketful, wasn’t it!’ remarked Rason, intending only to be amiable.

  ‘No doubt it was troublesome,’ said Weslake, with laboured patience. ‘I happen to remember he had to make room for it, to take – something – out of his side pocket and put it into his breast pocket.’

  Weslake’s hesitation had been due to a desire to avoid opening another field for tedious questioning. Rason jumped blindly on the hesitation.

  ‘What did he take out of his pocket, Sir Reginald?’

  ‘He took from his side pocket, Mr Rason, a gold snuff-box. He had intended to present it to Lord Haddenham, but something prevented him from doing so. And if you want further information about the snuff-box –’

  ‘I’ll find it in Kyle’s Life of George IV!’ snapped Rason. Weslake glared at him. Rason had sized up his man and deemed it prudent to break the rules.

  ‘You saw that snuff-box in Stentoller’s hand at ten-thirty. It was found on Haddenham’s dead body. I am afraid I must take that sword away with me. We shall want it for evidence.’

  ‘My God!’ gasped Weslake. ‘Then Stentoller must have found out that Haddenham –’

  But he did not finish the sentence. Though no longer a member of the Terracotta, he would not drag the club’s name into the newspapers.

  The Henpecked Murderer

  Chapter One

  The case of Crippen has been retold so often and in so many languages that the facts are known even to those students of criminal psychology who were not born in 1910, when it all happened. That he was the first murderer to be caught by wireless telegraphy, as it was then called, is to-day of less interest than the fact that police, counsel, and finally warders of the condemned cell all agreed that he was a ‘decent little man’, a ‘gentleman’, in the moral rather than the social sense of the word. Yet he buried portions of his wife under the floor-boards of the kitchen.

  Alfred Cummarten had much of the mentality of Crippen. The Cummarten murder, in 1934, was a sort of tangent to the Crippen murder. As he had not read the case, Cummarten made most of Crippen’s minor mistakes, avoiding the major mistake of flight. He was not as anxious as the decent little Crippen that no one else should suffer for his sins – a moral defect which brought its own penalty.

  There was even a physical resemblance to the original, for Cummarten was a shortish man, with brown, protuberant eyes, a moustache, and a waxen complexion.

  Moreover, there was, to start with, exactly the same set-up. Gertrude Cummarten, like Cora Crippen, was regarded by her husband with esteem and affection, although she was shrewish, greedy, and wholly selfish. She drilled and bullied him – for Gertrude, too, was physically larger than her husband, and would sometimes strike him in anger. That her attractions were fading at thirty-seven had, really, nothing to do with the case, because the girl, Isabel Redding, appealed primarily to Cummarten’s thwarted paternal instinct.

  Isabel, as is now known, was of unidentifiable origin. Someone contrived her admission to a convent school, where she acquired a certain ladylike address, if nothing else. She was twenty-two when she applied to Cummarten for employment as a stenographer. Cummarten was a shipping agent with a small but steady clientèle.

  Isabel was decorative, docile, but remarkably inefficient. Cummarten saw in her an innocent child-woman who could be moulded into the kind of woman he would like his daughter to be – if he had a daughter. So he engaged another girl to be his secretary, and kept Isabel on to run the errands and stamp the envelopes.

  Being a silly little man (though Scotland Yard would not agree) he asked her for the week-end to The Laurels, his modest house on the outskirts of Thadham, an old market town some twenty miles from London. He was guileless enough to suggest that his wife should elect herself an honorary aunt.

  Gertrude’s marked coldness did not deter Isabel from spending three more week-ends at The Laurels during 1933, the last occasion being in July, when Cummarten took her to a flower-show and introduced her to most of his acquaintances.

  He was deeply shocked when Gertrude said she did not believe a word of his angel-child nonsense, and that, if he could afford a mistress, which surprised her, he might have the decency not to humiliate his wife by flaunting the girl before the neighbours. The truth was that he himself did believe the angel-child nonsense.

  Gertrude’s allegation that he was spending money on the girl was true. There was her salary, the bulk of which was a dead weight on the business. There were other expenses – not indeed for dress or for any kind of entertainment, but for a special diet, to build up her nervous system; for massage to cure her insomnia, and even for books to nourish her mind.

  Gertrude’s accusation lost its horror through repetition. By the autumn of 1933, it no longer seemed outrageous to notice the physical charms of the young woman he had hitherto thought of as his spiritual daughter. In short, under some highfalutin phrase, she became his mistress in fact. In this period she betrayed a certain sophistication which compelled him to revise the angel-child theory, and to wonder what she had been doing between leaving the convent school and applying to him for employment.

  By the turn of the year, his expenditure began to alarm him. This, he believed, was largely his own fault. He would discover little needs of Isabel’s, and urge her to do the buying. It was he who suggested that she needed a new bag, not expecting that she would order one in crocodile, costing nine pounds. It was he who said she must have new hairbrushes. She ordered a dressing-table set in tortoiseshell. He had admired it before she revealed that it would cost one hundred guineas.

  ‘You’ve been swindled, darling!’ he gasped. ‘I’ve noticed things exactly like this at Harridges – the whole layout for about a couple of pounds.’

  ‘But this is real tortoiseshell, darling!’ she explained. ‘It comes from Perriere’s, and they said they would always lend us sixty pounds on it if we should ever need the money. But, of course, I’ll take it back if you think I’ve been extravagant.’

  By ill luck he had knocked one of the scent bottles to the floor, slightly chipping the glass and slightly denting the tortoiseshell. She had been so nice about it – so anxious to cover up the damage so that the set could be returned – that he eventually sent the cheque to Perriere’s, feeling that he had robbed Gertrude.

  He was now leading a double life, which he hated. To rob it of some of its duplicity, the silly little man confided in his wife. She treated him with scorn and intensified bullying – which made him feel better, because he despised himself and felt that he ought to be punished.

  In July, 1934, Isabel gave him the usual reason, true or false, for hurrying a divorce, to be followed by immediate marriage. He said he would put it to Gertrude, but did not, because he was afraid.

  For an utterly miserable fortnight he stalled Isabel with palpable lies.

  On Monday, August 7th, a Bank Holiday, Isabel took the matter out of his hands by turning up uninvited at The Laurels – at half past two in the afternoon – for a showdown with Gertrude.

  Chapter Two

  Gertrude had been visiting a cousin at Brighton and did not return until about nine o’ clock. A light rain was falling and it was getting dark – but not too dark for the neighbours to observe her return from behind their curtains. They had been, in a sense, waiting for her. They had see
n Isabel arrive: they had discussed the details of her dress: in particular, a magenta scarf which was unfashionable and strident but, in her case, effective: a crocodile bag, which they opined must have cost Mr Cummarten a matter of pounds. They knew that Gertrude had been to Brighton for the day. Whatever happened now, there was certain to be a scandal or at least a rumpus.

  ‘As soon as I heard her footsteps I went into the hall and turned on the light,’ wrote Cummarten. ‘I meant to tell her about Isabel at once, but, of course, I had to lead up to it a bit. So in the hall I just said something ordinary, like I hoped she had enjoyed her day.’

  ‘Well, I did think you’d have the light on in the hall to welcome me home, even if it’d be a false welcome,’ said Gertrude. ‘But I expect we have to be careful with the housekeeping bills, now that you’re spending so much money on that girl. And since you ask, I didn’t go to Brighton for pleasure. I went to Mabel for advice and I’m going to take her advice. Come in here and sit down, Alfred.’

  She took him into the little room which they called the morning-room because they had breakfast there. He obediently sat down at the table, knowing that he could not secure her attention until she had talked herself to a standstill.

  ‘Mabel says I’m a soft-hearted fool to put up with it and she’s right. And it’s got to be one of two things, Alfred. Either you sack that girl from the office and break off with her altogether or I’m going to divorce you.’

  ‘I was so surprised when she said this after all I’d been through that I said nothing but stared at her like a ninny.’

  ‘You needn’t pretend it would break your heart, Alfred. I’ve no doubt that you’d be glad enough to have done with our marriage altogether, after the mockery you’ve made of it. But Mabel says the judge would make an order for you to pay me at least a third of your income, and perhaps a half, and so you may want to think twice. Alfred, whose bag is that over there by the coal scuttle?’

  ‘As soon as she saw the bag I knew she would tell herself everything and I needn’t try to break it gently but just answer her questions.’

  ‘It’s Isabel’s bag,’ said Cummarten.

  ‘So she has been here! I suspected it from your sly behaviour. What time did she go?’

  ‘She didn’t go. She’s in the drawing-room.’

  ‘Then she’s going now. I’m going to turn her out.’

  ‘You aren’t,’ said Cummarten. ‘You can’t get into the drawing-room. I’ve locked the door and I’ve got the key.’

  The pitch of his voice made her spine tingle. She reached across the breakfast table, upsetting a vase of flowers, and grabbed him by the lapel of his coat.

  ‘What’re you trying to tell me, Alfred? Go on! Say it!’

  ‘She’s dead,’ answered Cummarten. ‘I killed her.’

  ‘Oh-h!’ It was a long-drawn, whispered moan. ‘To think that this should happen to me! Oh, dear God, what have I done to deserve this!’

  Characteristically, she was concerned solely with the impact of the murder on her own circumstances. She sprawled forward on the table, her face on her forearm, and burst into tears. So violent was her emotion that the silly little man went round to her side of the table to comfort her.

  ‘There, there, my dear!’ He patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t take on so, Gert! It won’t bring the poor girl back to life. Something goes wrong sometimes, and this sort of thing happens. Stop, Gert – you’ll make yourself ill!’

  Presently she was able to speak, in a voice shaken with convulsive sobs.

  ‘I was twenty-four when you married me and I’m thirty-seven now. You’ve had the best years of my life. I could put up with your wanting a younger woman, though it hurt my feelings more than you know. But I did believe you’d always look after me in my old age.’

  ‘Thirty-seven isn’t old age, dear. Now, do calm yourself, because we’ve got to settle practical matters before I’m arrested.’

  That caught her attention.

  ‘You haven’t got any money outside the business, have you?’

  ‘No. And I’m afraid you won’t get much for that. It’s largely a personal connexion.’

  ‘I can’t even go back to nursing. No one would employ me after this!’ Her imagination still struggled against accepting the fact of disaster to herself. ‘Are you sure you’ve killed her, Alfred? Are you sure she isn’t fooling you? How did you kill her? I don’t believe you could kill anybody without a revolver, which you haven’t got.’

  ‘I killed her, all right! She made out we had to have a divorce and me marry her. Even if she was telling the truth about that, I’ve good reason to believe she could have picked on others besides me. There’s one she called Len – I’ve seen him hanging about – big Spanish-looking feller. Never mind!’

  ‘But you didn’t have to kill her for that, Alfred!’

  ‘Let me finish! She came down here on her own for a showdown with you. When she offered to say nothing to you and cut out all the divorce stuff if I’d hand over a thousand pounds, I got pretty angry. After a while, she tried to coax me into a good temper by love-making. Real love-making! I suppose I softened up a bit, and then I felt what a worm I was for letting a woman like that wheedle me. I’d got my arm round her neck in some way – can’t remember quite how – and she was pretending to struggle. And I thought if I pushed her chin back it’d break her neck – sort of leverage. And I suddenly wanted to do that more than I’d ever wanted to do anything. And I did it. That’s all!’

  ‘I don’t believe you killed her!’ Gertrude was lashing herself into wishful disbelief. ‘Give me that key!’

  She went alone to the drawing-room. Her past training as a hospital nurse saved her from the normal revulsion. When she returned she was carrying the magenta scarf.

  ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you could’ve done it, but you have.’ She went on: ‘I’ve brought this scarf, because it’s the sort of thing you would leave lying about, same as you left that bag. You’d better put them both together. The neighbours will have noticed both. And we’ll have a look round to see if there’s anything else, before I go.’

  ‘What’s the use, Gert! As soon as you’ve gone, I’m going to ring the police.’

  ‘I thought that was in your mind!’ Her self-pity was lost in fury. ‘Going to give up without lifting a finger to save yourself? And you call yourself a man!’

  ‘I can take what’s coming to me without squealing, anyhow!’

  ‘You mean you can take what’s coming to me!’ she shrilled. ‘You’re ready to kick me into the gutter where I shall be branded for life as the wife of a murderer, and all you think about is how brave you are!’

  ‘But what can I do? It’s no good running away!’

  ‘You can get rid of her if you keep your head. You can use a spade, can’t you! And who’s to know she didn’t leave the house and run off with a man who’s got more money than you – not that anyone will bother their heads about what happens to that sort!’

  Cummarten had planned to give himself up, because he had not been able to imagine doing anything else. But already Gertrude had planted in his brain the idea of escape. For thirteen years he had lived under her domination. Always, after his domestic blunders, she had first bullied him and then cleared up the mess. The same process was now at work on a larger scale.

  ‘Suppose something goes wrong?’ he objected, in order to receive her reassurance, which promptly came.

  ‘Nothing will go wrong if you do as you’re told. I shall have to leave everything in your hands, because I know you wouldn’t wish me to take any risk of being dragged into it. I shan’t worry about myself. No one need know I’ve helped you. I wasn’t seen coming home to-night. It so happened that I took the bus from the junction instead of waiting for the local train, and no one else got out at the corner and there was no one about, because it was raining. I’ll get along to Ealing and spend the night with mother. You can say I went straight there from Mabel’s. You can give out that mothe
r is ill and I’m looking after her. As soon as it’s all clear, I’ll come back.’

  ‘You mean we can take up our life again as if nothing had happened!’ There was awe in his voice as the idea took shape.

  ‘I’m quite ready to try all over again to make you happy, Alfred, now that you’ve learnt your lesson.’

  But she must, of course, take care not to burn her fingers. In a few minutes she had evolved a plan by which all risk was concentrated upon Cummarten. She made him repeat his orders and then:

  ‘I’ll slip out to the garage now and get into the car. The neighbours will hear the engine. And if anyone asks you afterwards, which they won’t, remember to say that you were driving the girl back to her flat in London. If anyone wants to speak to me they can ring me up at mother’s.’

  Chapter Three

  With a course of action laid down for him, Cummarten’s nerve steadied. He made good time to London. In Holborn he dropped Gertrude at the tube station, where she was to take a train to Ealing. He himself drove on to the flatlet, which was in one of the dingier blocks in Bloomsbury. The block had no resident porter – a fact which most of the residents regarded as an advantage. He chose his moment for leaving the car, his sole concern being that no one should observe that he was alone.

  The flatlet consisted of a fair-sized room with two curtained recesses. It was clean but untidy. Three large fans nailed on the walls gave it a would-be artistic atmosphere, helped by an expensively elaborate cover on the ottoman bed. For the rest, there was the usual bed-sitting-room furniture.

  Acting on Gertrude’s instructions with all possible speed, Cummarten found Isabel’s suitcase. Into it he crammed her nightdress and other small oddments. Next, ‘any small articles you’ve given her that are expensive.’ The tortoiseshell dressing-table set was certainly expensive though it was not small, as it consisted of eight pieces including the scent bottles. It occupied two-thirds of the suitcase and left no room for any additions.