The Notched Hairpin

by H. F. Heard

  Chapter II

  THE INSPECTOR’S “WHO?”

  I was just about to seat myself on this throne and see how it felt—and I was certain it must feel as good as it looked—for inspiration, when the house agent, who till then had said hardly a word, began to speak.

  Not unnaturally, I felt impatience. I couldn’t help dreading that this man of ledgers, rents, and “advts.” would be bound to spoil quite half of my perfectly toned appreciation with sales-pressure talk about the “quaint setup” and “picturesque atmosphere.” What then was my surprise, yes, shock, when I found that what he was actually saying was so incongruous that beside it the weariest cliches of the most dismal trafficker in house property would have been more apposite—and more soothing! What he was saying was not only highly disturbing but so utterly out of character with what one has a right to expect of a house agent. I felt as though one of those nightmares was coming on, when the chest of drawers begins to turn into a loquacious and voracious dragon.

  “The body was there. As he stabbed himself, he fell over, of course.”

  Mr. Mycroft’s counter, “You’re certain of your … diagnosis?” was not answered by this utterly out-of-character character.

  A further note of the odd and uncanny, a further darkening of the sudden cloud spreading over my bright day, was caused by the voice of the wonderfully prim and efficient maid taking up the tale; saying, “Excuse me, Sir, Mr. Sankey—he was murdered. I don’t say that he was a man who was loved or admired, but give the dead their due and the living their rights, murdered he was, and I know it. And I know that the living ought to be protected, and not just told, against all their senses and their commonsense into the bargain, that it was just common-and-garden suicide as anyone of us might be taken with after influenza or crossed in love.”

  If this outbreak disconcerted me, it did not seem to have any such effect on the other two. They showed as little discomposure as did Balaam when his ass spoke and, in further likeness to that perverse if cold-blooded prophet, proceeded to enter into easy conversation with their unexpected interrupter.

  “Well, Jane,” said the agent, with the ease of someone asking a crony of the inglenook to cap one of his stories, “tell this gentleman your theory.”

  “Theories and such things, Sir, if you will pardon me, I know nothing about. Them things I leave to those who think they do—” and with this there was shot a glance that was meant to win Mr. M., who certainly had already won her heart, and defy the rival who had refused to treat her hope of the excitement of murder as being well-founded.

  With a sniff she swept on. “I trust my senses and not theories, and nothing will move me not till Judgment Day, no not Judgment Day itself, that poor Mr. Sankey—as one has a right to call him whatever he may have been till he was murdered—poor Mr. Sankey was murdered, and what is more—” and here she seemed to feel the part of tragedy queen hovering over her with all its regalia—“right under my nose as I might say.”

  To Mr. M.’s rally, “You don’t mean—as we are dealing, as you rightly claim, not with theory but with fact—that you really smelled the murderer?” she granted, as I am sure she would not to the rest of us, a cold smile of triumph.

  “No, but as good as that. I as good as saw the murderer enter with my eyes and heard him with my ears. There was I, up in the dining room through which I just brought you. I was getting things ready for poor Mr. Sankey’s lunch and was just by the window and suddenly I heard the garden door whine or twang. I’ll be glad, if I may make so bold, to show you in a moment how it does it, and no oil will ever stop it, that I can answer for too. ‘I’ll be bound,’ I said to myself, “that’s the trash man come to clear up those cuttings and prunings.’”

  “What cuttings?” asked Mr. Mycroft, with that curious passion he has for making devious talkers deviate still more.

  Of course, she rose to the question with delight, and their friendship was further cemented. “Well, after all, it was rather prompt, I remember thinking—the trash man coming so soon. For the prunings were made only the day before. Only the day before, Mr. Millum—now, there is a nice gentleman, the kind of man who can’t help noticing when a house is well-kept. And indeed he might envy this one; not that I say it who shouldn’t but because Mrs. Sprigg, over the way, who looks after for him—though heaven knows I’ve nothing against her, save she’s fonder of talk than work—well, she has neither the time nor the skill to look after that place as this is, seeing that her husband was never strong, and then with …”

  But that, heaven be thanked, was too much even for Mr. Mycroft. He not unneatly embanked this spreading and sprawling delta of reminiscence by giving her back her lost channel and clue.

  “Mr. Millum, you were saying?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Millum dropped in, as he’s always dropping or perhaps I ought to be saying he was wanted. For poor Mr. Sankey liked it in his way. Like some cats, when you stroke them they want you to go on, and maybe would scratch you if you didn’t, but nary a bit, as my mother who was a bit broad in her speech would say, nary a bit would they show that they did.”

  I thought we were in for country-life natural history as illustrated by the habits of the smaller felines. But Mr. Millum rose to the surface again, and with him, my rather tiring hopes.

  “Mr. Millum was saying, when I was bringing Mr. Sankey his ‘elevens,’ that naturally the bower ought to be pruned—that was why it was getting leggy at the sides and overgrown at the top. And evidently Mr. Sankey wanted it done, in his way. Mr. Sankey hated having anything done round him. But then, on the other hand, he hated the thought that he could be seen from the house. That’s why he liked the bower. Oh, he was a close one. He could sit there, and no one, not from one of our windows, could see him. That’s why I couldn’t actually see the poor dear gentleman …” (tragedy had raised her late and obviously while alive disliked master to terms of sad affection) “actually killed. Well, Mr. Millum went on about the bower being really hardly any use now and that a gardener ought to be sent for to prune it. Mr. Sankey grudged like a grating gate that he was tired of the bower. He’d move anyhow—though where else in the garden he’d find as nice a seat should have been clear as a conundrum to a one-eyed man. Mr. Millum was so patient-like, pointing out how easily the pruning could be done and quickly too, and then he’d have his privacy and the sun too. Finally Mr. Sankey said sour-as-turned-milk-like (though that was nothing to remark, heaven knows), ‘Well, if you’re so keen that I should stay where I am and be shaded properly, do it yourself!’

  “I left them together. But after a few minutes Mr. Millum passed me in the hall, saying, kind, good man, that he’d be back after lunch and would get to work and would see that he left everything tidy and bring no twig nor leaf in on my carpets. And he was as good as his word—always is. There he was, clipping and cutting away all afternoon till the little spot, as you see for yourselves, was neat as though it’d been to the barber’s, and, need I say, seeing what I’ve said, there wasn’t a leaf or twig or husk of an old beechnut—and cling they do to rugs if once they get in them—brought in on one piece of my carpets!”

  Perhaps even Mr. M. felt this narrative style was too exuberant. Anyhow, he took rest from its flood or gale by sinking down into the fine stone chair which I had fancied as my seat of authorship but which I now couldn’t help feeling had about it an unpleasant sense of its last disagreeable occupant and his disagreeable last session. But Mr. M. leaned back at his ease and appeared only to be scanning idly the interlaced twigs that arched above us, every now and then dipping his head a little, perhaps hoping to spy a bird’s nest, for the birds were fussing about up there, as they will in spring.

  Jane, however, needed no obsequious attention to keep her going.

  “Next morning, Mr. Sankey told me at breakfast that I was to tell Mrs. Sprigg that Mr. Millum was to come and see him at eleven prompt. Now, punctual as I am and was always, to be told to come like that would have made me late as sure as sure—just hu
man nature, you know. But would you believe it, as I crossed the hall here on the stroke of eleven—for punctual I had to be, like it or not—there was good Mr. Millum at the door. I put down my tray, on which I had Mr. Sankey’s hot chocolate and the small cup of cream and the tiny phial of vanilla, and let him in. Then I took up my tray and, like the perfect gentleman he is, he held the doors open for me. And so we came to Mr. Sankey out here together. Mr. Sankey, as I think you’ve learned, never thanked anyone for anything. All he said when the two of us come out was, ‘Put the tray here!’ And while I was arranging it as he liked—and how he liked and disliked no one could know who didn’t do for him—Mr, Millum stood by cheerful and patient-like, just chatting and keeping amusing. He did glance at his pruning, but knowing well he’d get no thanks (for, as my Irish grandmother used to say, ‘What’d you expect from a pig but a grunt?’), he and I went back through the house and I took him to the door and showed him out.

  “And then …”

  Jane’s voice sank as she rose to her obviously oncoming emotional climax, “And then … I come in here as light as the day, and it was a lovely one. I pass right up to this window—” the graphic present of the seeress had now taken her style—“and I am just going out and to those steps down to ask Mr. S. will he lunch out or in, seeing what a day it was, when hearing, as I’ve said, the garden door twang, up I glance and surely I see the top of it opening. You can see it from the dining-room window just up there. It opened only a little, but I thought, ‘Oh, he’s (by that I meant the trash man) seen Mr. Sankey’s out there and so’ll call another time.’ Most people knew Mr. Sankey was cranky, if you’ll forgive the rhyme; and that their tip depended on their not upsetting him. And with that, light as air, I slipped down to this quiet place, and quiet it was and heavy as lead. For there he was, in that nice white silk suit he’d just put on that morning, flat on the gravel and stone slab that you see’s round the chair, and the nice book he’d been reading flattened under him.

  “Of course, I kept my head. You can’t have tidied up messes half your life from a full home to a home like this full of things to be kept just right without being used to a mess and not losing your patience when it happens. I went and telephoned as straight as I’m talking to you and said to Mr. Timmins—that’s our chief constable and a fine man if ever there was one—‘Mr. Timmins,’ I said, ‘I trust you’re well and would you mind stepping round, for everything shall be left just as it is until you come, strange though that may be for one like myself who likes tidiness, for Mr. Sankey’s just been murdered.’”

  “Thank you, thank you,” broke in Mr. M. at last. “A most orderly report of perfectly correct procedure, and the rest we know.”

  “Thank you, Jane,” added the house inspector, and she actually took their hint, thinking perhaps this was as fine an exit line as she could manage.

  After she had passed through the door with a conscious sense of finish, we followed into the dining room where, too, she left us to ourselves. As that door closed, Mr. Mycroft remarked with a certain challenge in his voice, “A good case. It’s murder as far as any jury or most judges would see, isn’t it?”

  “So I thought,” replied the inspector. “And the further steps seemed at first to confirm all we’ve heard. First I went into the lane—I was down here within a few hours. The lane behind that wall is a very quiet place where tramps would naturally doss and doze the day off. Well, one of them, we presume, is there. He notices the door is ajar. He slips through and sees Sankey sitting, perhaps dozing, with his back to the door. He steals up the grass path, as he is hidden from the house, to see if he can snitch anything—watch, cigarette case, etc. As he’s quietly turning over the things on the stone table by Sankey, Sankey stirs. Tramp snatches up the first thing, the paper knife. Sankey would stretch out his left arm to seize intruder, who almost involuntarily would strike down at Sankey’s left breast and give him a heart stab, after which he would bolt quietly. I’ll come to the marks on the hilt in a moment, but meanwhile the whole of that theory had been rammed fast and sunk by an awkward fact. When I came to the garden door I found … well, come, and I’ll show you.”

  We went down the little grass walk to the green door. Mr. M. and our guide dropped on their knees as though at a shrine. I bent in he background, as it ruins trousers to kneel. But I could see and understand, as our guide said, “You see, there is a silt of shriveled blossom petals and small leaves packed in with light mud, splashed and pelted on by the last heavy shower. There has been no heavy rain here for ten days. That door has not been opened for that time, at the least.”

  The argument was conclusive and I saw Mr. M. nod.

  He added, though, “But she heard it?”

  “Yes,” replied the other, “I can show you what she thought she heard, now you two are witnesses that the door has not been opened for a considerable time and could not have been opened on that day.”

  With this he stood up and, taking a key from his pocket, put it into the lock. With a wrench it gave, and with another wrench he pulled the door open, which, as though in protest, made an angry twang. We all looked up. At the top it was fitted with one of those old-fashioned hasps rather like giant jew’s-harps, with which old doors used to be fitted to make them, when they slammed, stay shut.

  “So that’s what Jane heard?” remarked Mr. M.

  “What she imagined she heard,” he was corrected.

  “Ah, but then why did she look up? What roused her attention at all?”

  “Because in fact she really first saw, and then, having mistaken what she did see, she invented, or should I say deduced, the appropriate sound to confirm her misinterpreted visual impression.”

  And to prove this intriguing theory, our guide began to lead us back to the dining room. But I could have told him that Mr. M. was as easy to lead as Jane was to keep to a point. I smiled as I saw the older detective snatch at a straw of distraction, for Mr. M. is one of those who believes that at least in information it is better to give than to receive. We had hardly turned from the door when he stopped, and then, making off along the side of the garden wall, called out, “Just a moment. One more confirmation of our fully documented narrative.” We waited while he rummaged over the sprays of wilted beech and finally produced quite a big one, almost a small branch, and held it up, apparently to admire it. But do what he would, he could make no further play with this distraction and after a moment consented to be led back to the dining room, still, however, absent-mindedly switching at his boots with the branchlet that he had acquired and evidently hardly knew he still retained. However, as he went up the steps he did drop it beside them. He would certainly have lost some of his gains with Jane if he had brought beech mast and leafage onto her glossy floors and velvety rugs.

  “Now,” said the inspector like an impatient lecturer when he had us ranged at the window, “please stay here and watch carefully that small piece of the top of the door which you can see from here.” With that he left us. A moment after, we heard him, though hidden, calling to us from the door’s direction, “Watch!” And as we watched, the top of the door moved some six inches or more out from shadow into light. But I heard no whine of the catch.

  When he rejoined us, Mr. M. said, “That was very neat.”

  The other took it with a certain half-ashamed modesty. “You’ve had time to enjoy some of the modern painting?”

  Again that almost resentful assent. “Yes, it does help us to discount the senses, doesn’t it? As Constable said, ‘What do we see but light falling on light.’” And Mr. M. sighed a trifle histrionically, I thought, as he added, “And shadows passing through shadows.”

  I am glad this kind of high-flown enigmatism seemed to fail to buoy up our inspector about the same time that my patience was thinning, and when I said almost a little sharply, “What is this all about?” Mr. M. condescended quite quickly with, “Of course, the door didn’t open at all. All that was done just now was to move a branch, which let a highlight of sunbeam fal
l upon the upper part of the door, which made the effect as though the top of the door itself had actually moved out from shadow into sunlight—in other words, had opened.”

  The inspector nodded and went on, “As the door never opened, no one entered by it. The garden therefore was completely closed, no one was in it, and so the only person who could have killed Sankey was himself. We have the motive, too, which the other alternative—murder—would have left really no more than a piece of fanciful construction. I’ve had the routine inquiries made as to undesirable tramps. There’s nothing to give us any clue there. You know that most tramps are known more or less to the police and most of them are fairly harmless—as far from the killer type as is a slug. For the other case—suicide I have on the contrary been able to get clear confirmation. Sankey was melancholic. I have seen his doctor: growing irritability—you’ve gathered that from the maid; influenza this spring and its after-depression lasting on acutely. That’s the general condition or state of likelihood. Have we any evidence, though, of any momentary provocation that might have sprung the mine of loaded self-disgust?”