The Case With Nine Solutions (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “True. I suppose that satisfies you—along with the faked visiting-card which was meant to impress her with the fact that a high official had descended on her—that I personally wasn’t mixed up in the business. I’ve the best of reasons for knowing that myself, of course, since I know I was elsewhere at the time. But what do you make of the raid?”

  “Documents were what the man was after, obviously, sir.”

  “It seems clear enough that he expected to get hold of something compromising amongst her correspondence. If you ask me, Inspector, Mr. Justice doesn’t seem to stick at much in his self-appointed task.”

  “I was pretty sure it was some of his work, sir. The Deepcar girl and Silverdale had a common interest in getting Mrs. Silverdale out of the way; there’s no doubt about that. And some people are perfect fools in what they put down on paper. It’s quite on the cards that Mr. Justice thought he might find something useful amongst Silverdale’s letters to Avice Deepcar.”

  “He evidently found something which he thought worth taking away, at any rate,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I had a notion that once you arrested Silverdale, things would begin to move faster. If Mr. Justice has got hold of any evidence, it’ll be in our hands before long, I’m prepared to bet.”

  “He’s saving us some trouble, if there is anything in writing,” the Inspector said, with a grin. “We would hardly have raided the Deepcar house on such a long chance as that; and he’s done the job for us.”

  “A most useful and altruistic person, evidently,” Sir Clinton commented ironically. “Now what about the rest of the affair, Inspector? If you accept Miss Deepcar’s evidence, then the bottom’s out of your case against Silverdale. He couldn’t be with her and at the bungalow simultaneously.”

  “Why should we accept her evidence at all?” Flamborough demanded crossly. “She had as much interest in getting Mrs. Silverdale out of the way as Silverdale himself had. Their interests are absolutely at one in the affair. It’s more than an even chance that she was his accomplice in the business—standing ready with this tale of hers to prove an alibi for him. I don’t reckon her statement was worth that!”

  He snapped his fingers contemptuously.

  “There’s something else, sir,” he continued. “This Mrs. Marple wasn’t at the house that night. What evidence is there that Silverdale and the Deepcar girl ever went home at all after they’d dined down town? There’s no corroboration of that story. Why not assume that the Deepcar girl was an actual accomplice on the spot? She and Silverdale may have driven out to the bungalow after dinner, and she may have stood at the window during the whole affair. There’s nothing against that, if you discount her story. My reading of the Deepcar girl is that she may be surface-shy, so to speak, but she’s got good strong fibre in her character underneath. Look how she faced up to you not ten minutes ago. Not much shyness about that.”

  “I think I’d have been a bit stirred up myself, Inspector, if you came along in my absence and pawed over all my private possessions. One isn’t necessarily a scoundrel if one turns peevish over a thing of that sort.”

  The Inspector let the point pass.

  “Have you any notion who this Mr. Justice can be, sir?”

  “I’ve a pretty fair notion, but it’s only a notion. Who stands to profit by the affair?”

  Some recollection seemed to cross the Inspector’s mind.

  “Spratton, of course, sir. And now I come to think of it, if you shaved off your moustache, he’s very like you in face and build. If Spratton’s going to collect his insurance on young Hassendean, then murder’s got to be proved.”

  “Well,” said Sir Clinton lightly. “I trust Mr. Spratton will get what he deserves in the matter.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  WRITTEN EVIDENCE

  Inspector Flamborough had to wait a couple of days before his unknown ally, Justice, made any further move. It so happened that Sir Clinton was not at headquarters when the post brought the expected communication; and the Inspector had plenty of time to consider the fresh evidence, unbiased by his superior’s comments. As soon as the Chief Constable reappeared, Flamborough went to him to display the latest document in the case.

  “This came by the midday post, sir,” he explained, laying some papers on the table. “It’s Mr. Justice again. The results of his raid on the Deepcar house, it seems.”

  Sir Clinton picked up the packet and opened out the papers. Some photographic prints attracted his attention, but he laid them aside and turned first to a plain sheet of paper on which the now familiar letters from telegraph forms had been gummed. With some deliberation he read the message.

  “I enclose photographs of part of the correspondence which has recently taken place between Dr. Silverdale and Miss Deepcar.

  “JUSTICE.”

  Sir Clinton gazed at the sheet for a moment or two, as though considering some matter unconnected with the message. At last he turned to the Inspector.

  “I suppose you’ve tried this thing for finger-prints? No good, eh? I can still smell a faint whiff of rubber from it—off his gloves, I suppose.”

  Flamborough shook his head in agreement with Sir Clinton’s surmise.

  “Nothing on it whatever, sir,” he confirmed.

  The Chief Constable laid down the sheet of paper and took up one of the photographs. It was of ordinary half-plate size and showed a slightly reduced copy of one page of a letter.

  that things cannot go on any longer in this way.

  The plan we talked over last seems the best. When I have given Hassendean hints about the use of hyoscine, he will probably see for himself how to get what he wants. After that, it merely means watching them, and I am sure that we shall soon have her out of our way. It will be very easy to make it seem intentional on their part; and no one is likely to look further than that.

  Flamborough watched the Chief Constable’s face as he read the message, and as soon as he saw that Sir Clinton had completed his perusal of it, the Inspector put in his word.

  “I’ve checked the writing, sir. It’s Silverdale’s beyond any doubt.”

  The Chief Constable nodded rather absent-mindedly and took up another of the prints. This showed a largely-magnified reproduction of the first two lines of the document; and for a minute or so Sir Clinton subjected the print to a minute scrutiny with a magnifying glass.

  “It’s an original, right enough,” Flamborough ventured to comment at last. “Mr. Justice has been very thorough, and he’s given us quite enough to prove that it isn’t a forgery. You can see there’s no sign of erasing or scraping of any sort on the paper of the original; and the magnification’s big enough to show up anything of that sort.”

  “That’s true,” Sir Clinton admitted. “And so far as one can see, the lines of the writing are normal. There are none of those halts-in-the-wrong-place that a forger makes if he traces a manuscript. The magnification’s quite big enough to show up anything of that sort. I guess you’re right, Inspector, it’s a photograph of part of a real document in Silverdale’s own handwriting.”

  “The rest of the things make that clear enough,” Flamborough said, indicating several other prints which showed microphotographic reproductions of a number of other details of the document. “There’s no doubt whatever that these are all genuine bits of Silverdale’s handwriting. There’s been no faking of the paper or anything like that.”

  Sir Clinton continued his study of the photographs, evidently with keen interest; but at last he put all the prints on his desk and turned to the Inspector.

  “Well, what do you make of it?” he demanded.

  “It seems clear enough to me,” Flamborough answered. “Look at the contents of that page as a whole. It’s as plain as one could wish. Silverdale and the Deepcar girl have had enough of waiting. Things can’t go on any longer in this way. They’ve been discussing various ways of getting rid of Mrs. Silverdale. ‘The plan we talked over last seems the best.’ That’s the final decision, evidently. Then you get a not
ion of what the plan was. Silverdale was going to prime Hassendean with information about hyoscine, and practically egg him on to drug Mrs. Silverdale so as to get her into his power. Then when the trap was ready, Silverdale and the Deepcar girl were to be on the alert to take advantage of the situation. And the last sentence makes it clear enough that they meant to go the length of murder and cover it up by making it look like a suicide-pact between young Hassendean and Mrs. Silverdale. That’s how I read it, sir.”

  Sir Clinton did not immediately endorse this opinion. Instead, he picked up the full copy of the manuscript page and studied it afresh as though searching for something in particular. At last he appeared to be satisfied; and he slid the photograph across the desk to the Inspector.

  “I don’t wish to bias you, Inspector, so I won’t describe what I see myself. But will you examine the word ‘probably’ in that text and tell me if anything whatever about it strikes you as peculiar—anything whatever, remember.”

  Flamborough studied the place indicated, first with his naked eye and then with the magnifying glass.

  “There’s no sign of any tampering with the paper that I can see, sir. The surface is intact and the ink lines run absolutely freely, without the halts and shakes one would expect in a forgery. The only thing I do notice is that the word looks just a trifle cramped.”

  “That’s what I wanted. Note that it’s in the middle of a line, Inspector. Now look at the word ‘shall’ in the fifth line from the bottom of the page.”

  “One might say it was a trifle cramped too,” Flamborough admitted.

  “And the ‘it’ in the third line from the foot?”

  “It looks like the same thing.”

  Flamborough relapsed into silence and studied the photograph word by word while Sir Clinton waited patiently.

  “The word ‘the’ in the phrase ‘about the use of hyoscine’ seems cramped too; and the ‘to’ at the start of the last line suffers in the same way. It’s so slight in all these cases that one wouldn’t notice it normally. I didn’t see it till you pointed it out. But if you’re going to suggest that there’s been any erasing and writing in fresh words to fit the blank space, I’ll have to disagree with you, sir. I simply don’t believe there’s been any thing of the sort.”

  “I shan’t differ from you over that,” Sir Clinton assured him blandly. “Now let’s think of something else for a change. Did it never occur to you, Inspector, how much the English language depends on the relative positions of words? If I say: ‘It struck you,’ that means something quite different from: ‘You struck it.’ And yet each sentence contains exactly the same words.”

  “That’s plain enough,” Flamborough admitted, “though I never thought of it in that way. And,” he added in a dubious tone, “I don’t see what it’s got to do with the case, either.”

  “That’s a pity,” Sir Clinton observed with a sympathy which hardly sounded genuine. “Suppose we think it over together. Where does one usually cramp words a trifle when one is writing?”

  “At the end of a line,” Flamborough suggested. “But these crampings seem to be all in the middle of the lines of that letter.”

  “That’s what seems to me interesting about them,” Sir Clinton explained drily. “And somehow it seems to associate itself in my mind with the fact that Mr. Justice hasn’t supplied us with the original document, but has gone to all the trouble of taking photographs of it.”

  “I wondered at that, myself,” the Inspector confessed. “It seems a bit futile, true enough.”

  “Try a fresh line, Inspector. We learned on fairly good authority that Mr. Justice took away a number of letters from Miss Deepcar’s house. And yet he only sends us a single page out of the lot. If the rest were important, why doesn’t he send them. If they aren’t important, why did he take them away?”

  “He may be holding them up for use later on, sir.”

  Sir Clinton shook his head.

  “My reading of the business is different. I think this is Mr. Justice’s last reserve. He’s throwing his last forces into the battle now.”

  “There seems to be something behind all this,” Flamborough admitted, passing his hand over his hair as though to stimulate his brain by the action, “but I can’t just fit it all together as you seem to have done, sir. You can say what you like, but that handwriting’s genuine; the paper’s not been tampered with; and I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

  Sir Clinton took pity on the inspector’s obvious anxiety.

  “Look at the phrasing of the whole document, Inspector. If you cared to do so, you could split it up into a set of phrases something after this style: ‘that things cannot go on any longer in this way. . . . The plan we talked over last seems the best. . . . When I have given . . . Hassendean . . . hints . . . about the . . . use of . . . hyoscine . . . he will probably see for himself how . . . to get what he wants. . . . After that, it merely means . . . watching them . . . and I am sure that . . . we shall soon have . . . her . . . out of our way. . . . It will be very easy . . . to make it seem . . . intentional . . . on their part . . . and no one is likely . . . to look further than that.’ Now, Inspector, if you met any one of these phrases by itself, would you infer from it inevitably that a murder was being planned? ‘Things cannot go on any longer in this way.’ If you consider how Mrs. Silverdale was behaving with young Hassendean, it’s not astonishing to find a phrase like that in a letter from Silverdale to the girl he was in love with. ‘The plan we talked over last seems the best.’ It might have been a day’s outing together that he was talking about for all one can tell. ‘He will probably see for himself how my wife is playing with him.’ And so forth.”

  “Yes, that’s all very well,” Flamborough put in, “but what about the word ‘hyoscine?’ That’s unusual in love-letters.”

  “Miss Deepcar was working on hyoscine under Silverdale’s directions, remember. It’s quite possible that he might have mentioned it incidentally.”

  “Now I think I see what you mean, sir. You think that this document that Mr. Justice has sent us is a patchwork—bits cut out of a lot of different letters and stuck together and then photographed?”

  “I’m suggesting it as a possibility, Inspector. See how it fits the facts. Here are a set of phrases, each one innocuous in itself, but with a cumulative effect of suggestion when you string them together as in this document. If the thing is a patchwork, then a number of real letters must have been used in order to get fragments which would suit. So Mr. Justice took a fair selection of epistles with him when he raided Miss Deepcar’s house. Further, in snipping out a sentence here and there from these letters, he sometimes had to include a phrase running on from one line to another in the original letter; but when he came to paste his fragments together, the original hiatus at the end of a line got transferred to the middle of a line in the final arrangement made to fit the page of the faked letter. That’s what struck me to begin with. For example, suppose that in the original letter you had the phrase: ‘he will probably see for himself how’; and the original line ended with ‘probably.’ That word might be a bit cramped at the end of the line. But in reconstructing the thing, ‘probably’ got into the middle of the line, and so you get this apparently meaningless cramping of the word when there was space enough for it to be written uncramped under normal conditions. Just the same with the other cases you spotted for yourself. They represent the ends of lines in the original letters, although they all occur in the middle of lines in the fake production.”

  “That sounds just as plausible as you like, sir. But you’ve got the knack of making things sound plausible. You’re not pulling my leg, are you?” the Inspector demanded suspiciously. “Besides, what about there being no sign of the paper having been tampered with?”

  “Look at what he’s given us,” Sir Clinton suggested. “The only case where he’s given a large-scale reproduction of a whole phrase is at the top of the letter: ‘Things cannot go on any longer in this way.’ That’s been complet
e in the original, and he gives you a large-scale copy of it showing that the texture of the paper is intact. Of course it is, since he cut the whole bit out of the letter en bloc. When it comes to the microphotographs, of course he only shows you small bits of the words and so there’s no sign of the cutting that was needed at the end of each fragment. And in the photograph of the full text, there’s no attempt to show you fine details. He simply pasted the fragments in their proper order on to a real sheet of note-paper, filled up the joins with Chinese White to hide the solutions of continuity, and used a process plate which wouldn’t show the slight differences in the shades of the whites where the Chinese White overlay the white of the notepaper. If you have a drawing to make for black-and-white reproduction in a book, you can mess about with Chinese White as much as you like, and it won’t show up in the final result at all.”

  Flamborough, with a gesture, admitted the plausibility of Sir Clinton’s hypothesis.

  “And you think that explains why he didn’t send us the original document, sir?”

  “Since I’m sure he hadn’t an original to send, it’s hard to see how he could have sent it, Inspector.”

  Flamborough did not contest this reading of the case. Instead, he passed to a fresh aspect of the subject.

  “Mr. Justice is evidently ready to go any length to avenge somebody—and that somebody can hardly have been young Hassendean, judging from what we’ve heard about his character.”

  Sir Clinton refused the gambit offered by the Inspector.

  “Mr. Justice is a very able person,” he observed, “even though he does make a mistake now and again, as in this last move.”

  “You said you’d some idea who he was, sir?” Flamborough said with an interrogative note in his voice.