“At least you’ll get his own impressions this time, if it’s true that he kept a diary,” the doctor pointed out.
“It depends on the diary,” Sir Clinton amended. “But I confess to some hopes.”
As they drew near the door of Heatherfield, Dr. Ringwood’s thoughts reverted to the state of things in the house. Glancing up at the front, his eye was caught by a lighted window which had been dark on his previous visit.
“That looks like a bedroom up there with the light on,” he pointed out to his companion. “It wasn’t lit up last time I was here. Perhaps Silverdale or his wife has come home.”
A shapeless shadow swept momentarily across the curtains of the lighted room as they watched.
“That’s a relief to my mind,” the doctor confessed. “I didn’t quite like leaving that maid alone with my patient. One never can tell what may happen in a fever case.”
As they were ascending the steps, a further thought struck him.
“Do you want to be advertised here—your name, I mean?”
“I think not, at present, so long as I can telephone without being overheard.”
“Very well. I’ll fix it,” Dr. Ringwood agreed, as he put his finger on the bell-push.
Much to his surprise, his ring brought no one to the door.
“That woman must be deaf, surely,” he said, as he pressed the button a second time. “She came quick enough the last time I was here. I hope nothing’s gone wrong.”
Sir Clinton waited until the prolonged peal of the bell ended when the doctor took his finger away, then he bent down to the slit of the letter-box and listened intently.
“I could swear I heard someone moving about, just then,” he said, as he rose to his full height again. “There must be someone on the premises to account for the shadow we saw at the window. This looks a bit rum, doctor. Ring again, will you?”
Dr. Ringwood obeyed. They could hear the trilling of a heavy gong somewhere in the back of the house.
“That ought to wake anyone up, surely,” he said with a nervous tinge in his voice. “This is my second experience of the sort this evening. I don’t much care about it.”
They waited for a minute, but no one came to the door.
“It’s not strictly legal,” Sir Clinton said at last, “but we’ve got to get inside somehow. I think we’ll make your patient an excuse, if the worst comes to the worst. Just wait here a moment and I’ll see what can be done.”
He went down the steps and disappeared in the fog. Dr. Ringwood waited for a minute or two, and then steps sounded in the hall behind the door. Sir Clinton opened it and motioned him to come in.
“The place seems to be empty,” he said hurriedly. “Stay here and see that no one passes you. I want to go round the ground floor first of all.”
He moved from door to door in the hall, switching on the lights and swiftly inspecting each room as he came to it.
“Nothing here,” he reported, and then made his way into the kitchen premises.
Dr. Ringwood heard his steps retreating; then, after a short interval, there came the sound of a door closing and the shooting of a bolt. It was not long before Sir Clinton reappeared.
“Somebody’s been on the premises,” he said curtly. “That must have been the sound I heard. The back door was open.”
Dr. Ringwood felt himself at a loss amid the complexities of his adventures.
“I hope that confounded maid hasn’t got the wind up and cleared out,” he exclaimed, his responsibility for his patient coming foremost in the confusion of the situation.
“No use thinking of chasing anyone through this fog,” Sir Clinton confessed, betraying in his turn his own professional bias. “Whoever it was has got clean away. Let’s go upstairs and have a look round, doctor.”
Leading the way, he snapped down the switch at the foot of the stair-case; but to Dr. Ringwood’s surprise, no light appeared above. Sir Clinton pulled a flash-lamp from his pocket and hurried towards the next flat; as he rounded the turn of the stair, he gave a muffled exclamation. At the same moment, a high-pitched voice higher up in the house broke into a torrent of aimless talk.
“That girl’s a bit delirious,” Dr. Ringwood diagnosed, as he heard the sound; and he quickened his ascent. But as he reached a little landing and could see ahead of him, he was brought up sharply by the sight which met his eyes. Sir Clinton was bending with his flash-lamp over a huddled mass which lay on the floor at the head of the flight, and a glance showed the doctor that it was the body of the maid who had admitted him to the house on his earlier visit.
“Come here, doctor, and see if anything can be done for her,” Sir Clinton’s voice broke in on his surprise.
He leaped up the intervening steps and stooped in his turn over the body, while Sir Clinton made way for him and kept the flash-lamp playing on the face. Down the well of the stairs came the voice of the delirious patient, sunk now to a querulous drone.
The briefest examination showed that the victim was beyond help.
“We might try artificial respiration, but it would really be simply time lost. She’s been strangled pretty efficiently.”
Sir Clinton’s face had grown dark as he bent over the body, but his voice betrayed nothing of his feelings.
“Then you’d better go up and look after that girl upstairs, doctor. She’s evidently in a bad way. I’ll attend to things here.”
Dr. Ringwood mechanically switched on the light of the next flight in the stairs and then experienced a sort of subconscious surprise to find it in action.
“I thought the fuse had gone,” he explained involuntarily, as he hurried up the stairs.
Left to himself, Sir Clinton turned his flash-lamp upwards on to the functionless electric light bracket above the landing and saw, as he had expected, that the bulb had been removed from the socket. A very short search revealed the lamp itself lying on the carpet. The Chief Constable picked it up gingerly and examined it minutely with his pocket-light; but his scrutiny merely proved that the glass was unmarked by any recent finger-prints. He put it carefully aside, entered the lighted bedroom, and secured a fresh bulb from one of the lamp-sockets there.
With this he returned to the landing and glanced round in search of something on which to stand, so that he could put the new bulb in the empty socket. The only available piece of furniture was a small table untidily covered with a cloth, which stood in one corner of the landing. Sir Clinton stepped across to it and inspected it minutely.
“Somebody’s been standing on that,” he noted. “But the traces are just about nil. The cloth’s thick enough to have saved the table-top from any marks of his boot-nails.”
Leaving the table untouched, he re-entered the room he had already visited and secured another small table, by means of which he was able to climb up and fix the new bulb in the empty socket over the landing. It refused to light, however, and he had to go to the foot of the stairs and reverse the switch before the current came on.
Shutting off his flash-lamp, Sir Clinton returned to the landing and bent once more over the body. The cause of death was perfectly apparent: a cord with a rough wooden handle at each end had been slipped round the woman’s throat and had been used as a tourniquet on her neck. The deep biting of the cord into the flesh indicated with sufficient plainness the brutality of the killer. Sir Clinton did not prolong his examination, and when he had finished, he drew out his pocket-handkerchief and covered the distorted face of the body. As he did so, Dr. Ringwood descended the stairs behind him.
“I’ll need to telephone for the hospital van,” he said. “It’s out of the question to leave that girl here in the state she’s in.”
Sir Clinton nodded his agreement. Then a thought seemed to strike him.
“Quite off her rocker, I suppose?” he demanded. “Or did she understand you when you spoke to her?”
“Delirious. She didn’t even seem to recognise me,” Dr. Ringwood explained shortly.
Then the reason for t
he Chief Constable’s questions seemed to occur to him.
“You mean she might be able to give evidence? It’s out of the question. She’s got a very bad attack. She won’t remember anything, even if she’s seen something or heard sounds. You’d get nothing out of her.”
Sir Clinton showed no particular disappointment.
“I hardly expected much.”
Dr. Ringwood continued his way down stairs and made his way to the telephone. When he had sent his message, he walked up again to the first floor. A light was on in one of the rooms, and he pushed open the door and entered, to find Sir Clinton kneeling on the floor in front of an antique chest of drawers.
A glance round the room showed the doctor that it belonged to Mrs. Silverdale. Through the half-open door of a wardrobe he caught sight of some dresses; the dressing-table was littered with feminine knick-knacks, among which was a powder-puff which the owner had not replaced in its box; a dressing-jacket hung on a chair close to the single bed. The whole room betrayed its constant use by some woman who was prepared to spend time on her toilette.
“Found anything further?” Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton glanced up from his task.
“Nothing except this.”
The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.
“Somebody’s broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The drawer’s been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It caught my eye when I came in.”
He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved across and looked down into it over the Chief Constable’s shoulder. A number of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his attention to these in the first place. He opened them, one after another, and found the contents of most of them in place. One or two rings, and a couple of small articles seemed to be missing.
“Quite likely these are things she’s wearing to-night,” he explained, replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke. “We’ll try again.”
The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of photographs of various people. Among them was one of young Hassendean, but it seemed to have no special value for Mrs. Silverdale, since it had been carelessly thrust in among the rest of the packet.
“Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems,” was Sir Clinton’s opinion.
He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the scribbled names of the various partners.
“One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow,” he pointed out. “No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line.”
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
“Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often at each dance.”
“Her dancing-partner, probably,” Dr. Ringwood surmised. “Young Hassendean, most likely, I should think.”
Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the drawer. His hand fell on a battered notebook.
“Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a convent. . . . H’m! Just a school-girl’s production,” he turned over a few pages, reading as he went, “and not altogether a nice school-girl,” he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. “There’s nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful later on, in certain circumstances.”
He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the drawer.
“That seems to be the lot. One thing’s pretty clear. The person who broke that lock wasn’t a common burglar, for he’d have pouched the trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what this search was for; and since the thing has probably been removed, it leaves one with a fairly wide field for guessing. Let’s have another look round.”
Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the bottom of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it was a scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it as a fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the stamp still adhering to it.
“H’m! Suggestive rather than conclusive,” was Sir Clinton’s verdict. “My first guess would be that this has been torn off a roughly-opened letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer at one time or another. But whether our murderous friend was after a packet of letters or not, one can’t say definitely.”
He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to examine the fragment closely.
“It’s got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date’s 1925, but the month part has been torn.”
He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully in his note-case.
“I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look as if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they must have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go the length of casual murder to secure them.”
Dr. Ringwood nodded.
“He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless woman.”
Sir Clinton’s face showed a faint trace of a smile.
“There are two sexes, doctor.”
“What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘he must,’ and you think it might have been a woman?”
“I don’t think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All that one can really say is that someone came here and killed that unfortunate woman. The rest’s simply conjecture and may be right or wrong. It’s easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts.”
Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.
“My brain’s too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I’m afraid,” he admitted, “but I’d like to hear anything that would explain the damned business.”
Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the doctor.
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” he said, “whether it’s the true solution or not’s quite another question. You came here about twenty past ten, were let in by the maid, saw your patient, listened to what the maid had to tell you—lucky for us you took that precaution or we’d have missed all that evidence, since she can’t tell us now—and left this house at twenty-five to eleven. We came back again, just an hour later. The business was done in between those times, obviously.”
“Not much theory there,” the doctor pointed out.
“I’m simply trying it over in my mind,” Sir Clinton explained, “and it’s just as well to have the time-limits clear to start with. Now we go on. Some time after you had got clear away from here, the murderer comes along. Let’s call that person X, just to avoid all prejudice about age or sex. Now X has thought out this murder beforehand, but not very long beforehand.”
“How do you make that out?” Dr. Ringwood demanded.
“Because the two bits of wood which form the handles of the tourniquet are simply pieces cut off a tree, and freshly cut, by the look of the ends. X must have had possession of these before coming into the house—hence premeditation. But if it had been a case of long premeditation, X would have had something better in the way of handles. I certainly wouldn’t have risked landing on a convenient branch at the last moment if I’d been doing the job myself; and X, I may say, strikes me as a remarkably cool, competent person, as you’ll see.”
“Go on,” the doctor said, making no attempt to conceal his interest.
“Our friend X probably had the cord in his or her pocket and had constructed the rough tourniquet while coming along the road. Our friend X was wearing gloves, I may say.”
“How do you know that?” Ringwood asked.
“You’ll see later. Now X went up to the front door and rang the bell. The maid came along, recognised X. . . .”
“How do you know that? “Ringwood repeated.
“I don’t know it. I’m just giving you the hypothesis you asked for. I don’t say it’s correct. To continue: this person X inquired if Silverdale (or Mrs. Silverdale, perhaps) was at ho
me. Naturally the maid said no. Most likely she told X that her companion had scarlatina. Then X decided to leave a note, and was invited into the house to write it. It was a long note, apparently; and the maid was told to go to the kitchen and wait till X had finished. So off she went.”
“Well?”
“X had no intention of putting pen to paper, of course. As soon as the maid was out of the way, X slipped upstairs and switched on the light in this room.”
“I’d forgotten it was the light in this window that we saw from the outside,” Dr. Ringwood interrupted. “Go on.”
“Then, very quietly, by shifting the table on the landing under the electric light, X removed the bulb that lighted the stair. One can reach it by standing on that table. Then X shifted the table back to its place. There were no finger-prints on the bulb—ergo, X must have been wearing gloves, as I told you.”
“You seem to have got a lot of details,” the doctor admitted. “But why all this manœuvring?”
“You’ll see immediately. I think I said already that whoever did the business was a very cool and competent person. When all was ready, X attracted the maid’s attention in some way. She came to the foot of the stairs, suspecting nothing, but probably wondering what X was doing, wandering about the house. It’s quite likely that X made the sick girl upstairs the pretext for calling and wandering out of bounds. Anyhow, the maid came to the foot of the stairs and moved the switch of the landing light. Nothing happened, of course, since the bulb had been removed. She tried the switch backwards and forwards once or twice most likely, and then she would conclude that the lamp was broken or the fuse gone. Probably she saw the reflection of the light from the room-door. In any case, she came quite unsuspiciously up the stair.”
Sir Clinton paused, as though to allow the doctor to raise objections; but none came, so he continued:
“Meanwhile X had taken up a position opposite the door of the room, at the foot of the second flight of stairs. If you remember, a person crouching there in semi-darkness would be concealed from anyone mounting the first flight. The tourniquet was ready, of course.”
The Case With Nine Solutions (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 5
