She Died a Lady

by John Dickson Carr

  ‘Hadn’t died of … ?’

  ‘No, sir. Both of them had been shot through the heart at very close range, body-range, with some small-calibre weapon.’

  It was so quiet in the garden that we could hear somebody talking over a back fence two houses away.

  ‘Well?’ growled H.M., though he seemed annoyed by some inner suspicion which made him puff very violently at the cigar. ‘If you’re goin’ to be so ruddy scientific and technical, I can tell you there’s nothing very unusual or surprisin’ in that. Plenty of suicides, especially suicide-pacts, do just that. They make double-sure of flyin’ to glory. They stand on the edge of a river; the man shoots the girl; over she goes; he shoots himself, and over he goes. Finish.’

  Craft nodded solemnly.

  ‘That’s true,’ he agreed. ‘What’s more, the wounds were characteristic suicide-wounds. Naturally, I couldn’t verify anything until we had a post-mortem report. But the coroner phoned Dr Hankins, and Dr Hankins did a post-mortem for us this morning.

  ‘Each victim had been killed by a .32 bullet. Fired, as I told you, at body-range. The clothes were powder-burned. There was burning, blackening, and tattooing of the wounds. That’s to say’ – Craft held up a well-sharpened pencil and sighted along it – ‘unconsumed bits of the propellant were embedded in the skin. Showing for certain sure the shots were fired at body-range. Double suicide.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said H.M., ‘what’s bitin’ you? Why have you got such a funny look on that dial of yours? There’s your evidence.’

  Again Craft nodded solemnly.

  ‘Yes, sir, there’s my evidence.’ He paused. ‘Only, you see, it wasn’t a double suicide. It was a double murder.’

  Now, you who read this record have been expecting it. You have been waiting for that word ‘murder’, and perhaps wondering when it would first occur. To you it is only the preparation for a battle of wits. But to me – having the thing flung in my face like this – every word Craft said came with a cold shock better left to your imagination.

  The talk of shot-wounds, ‘unconsumed bits of the propellant were embedded in the skin’, was bad enough when this applied to Rita Wainright. As we sat in the garden under the apple-tree, Rita had become no more than a heap of flesh on a morgue-slab. But any talk of murder, of someone feeling a hate violent enough to kill both Rita and Barry Sullivan, was completely incredible.

  H.M., his mouth open, regarded Craft with something like awe. But he did not comment.

  ‘Now, let’s take the weapon,’ pursued the superintendent. ‘To be exact, a .32 Browning automatic. If Mr Sullivan shot the lady, and then shot himself – or the other way round, if you prefer – then you’d expect the gun to fall into the sea along with ’em. Wouldn’t you?’

  H.M. eyed him. ‘I don’t expect anything, son. You’re tellin’ the story. You go ahead.’

  ‘Or else,’ argued Craft, ‘you’d expect to find it on the cliff somewhere near the place where they went over. But you wouldn’t –’ here he lifted the pencil and raised his shaggy eyebrows for emphasis – ‘you wouldn’t expect to find it lying in the main road a very long distance from the sea, and fully half a mile away from the Wainrights’ house?’

  ‘So?’ said H.M.

  ‘I’d better explain that. Is anybody here acquainted with Mr Stephen Grange? He’s a solicitor at Barnstaple, but he lives here at Lyncombe.’

  ‘Very much so,’ I answered, as H.M. shook his head. ‘That was his daughter out there in the street with us a while ago.’

  Craft digested this.

  ‘On Saturday night,’ he went on, ‘or, rather, about one-thirty o’clock on Sunday morning, Mr Grange was driving back home in his car from a visit to Minehead. He passed the Wainrights’ bungalow. We – I mean the police – were there at the time, but naturally Mr Grange didn’t know there was anything wrong.

  ‘He was driving very slowly and carefully, as all people ought to do nowadays. About half a mile further on in the direction of Lyncombe, his lights picked up something bright and shiny lying at the side of the road. Mr Grange is a careful and methodical sort of gentleman, so he got out to investigate.’

  (Just like Steve Grange.)

  ‘It was a .32 Browning automatic, bright polished steel except for the hard-rubber grip. Mind you, Mr Grange hadn’t any reason to think anything was wrong. It was just a gun. But, as I say, he’s a careful and methodical sort of fellow who’s been no end of help to us. He picked it up in his finger-tips’ – Craft illustrated – ‘and he could tell by smelling the barrel that it had been fired some hours before.

  ‘He took it home with him that night. Next day he turned it in at the police-station at Lynton. It was sent on to me at Barnstaple. In fact, it arrived early this morning: just after I’d got the news about two drowned bodies that weren’t drowned, but had bullet-holes in ’em. Two bullets had been fired from this gun; and it’d been wiped clean of fingerprints. I turned everything over to Major Selden, the ballistics man. I’ve just come from him. The bullet that killed Mrs Wainright and the bullet that killed Mr Sullivan were both fired from that Browning automatic.’

  Superintendent Craft paused.

  H.M. opened one eye.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘D’ye know, son, I’ve been rather expecting that, somehow.’

  ‘But that’s not all the major was able to say. If we hadn’t found the automatic, we’d have thought for certain it was suicide. Perfect crime, as you might call it. But this particular gun has got a distinct “back-fire”, as some of them have. That’s to say, in non-technical language, you can’t possibly fire it without a back-fire of unburnt powder-grains that get embedded in your hand –’

  H.M. was no longer drowsy. He had sat up straight.

  ‘– like a trade-mark. Neither Mrs Wainright’s hand nor Mr Sullivan’s hand had the marks. So it wasn’t suicide, sir. It was murder.’

  ‘There’s no doubt about that, son?’

  ‘You just talk to Major Selden. He’ll convince you.’

  ‘Oh, my eye!’ muttered H.M. ‘Oh, lord love a duck!’

  Craft turned round to me. He was apologetic but determined. His good eye smiled while the other remained lifeless.

  ‘Now, Doctor, we’ve already had your testimony.’

  ‘You have. But this is the most fantastic –’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Craft; ‘that’s just the trouble. Now let’s see.’

  He leafed back through his notebook.

  ‘At nine o’clock on Saturday night, fixed by the news on the radio, Mrs Wainright ran out of the house. Mr Sullivan followed her. Mrs Wainright, or somebody, left a note on the kitchen table saying she was going to do herself in. Am I correct there?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Craft, I knew, was speaking to H.M. rather than to me.

  ‘Two sets of footprints, one of Mrs Wainright’s and one of Mr Sullivan’s, lead out to the edge of the cliff. There’s absolutely no fake or trickery – we establish this – about those prints.

  ‘But,’ said Craft, ‘between nine o’clock and nine-thirty, somebody shot both the victims. The shooting was done at body-range. The murderer must have been standing in front of them, close enough to touch them. And yet there are no footprints anywhere else, except Dr Croxley’s.

  ‘At half-past nine Dr Croxley got alarmed and went out to see what had happened to them. He saw the tracks leading to the cliff-edge. He went out there, looked over, and came back to the bungalow.’ Here Craft grew heavily whimsical. ‘I don’t suppose you shot those two yourself, did you, Doctor?’

  ‘Great Scott, no!’

  Craft smiled in that un-funny way of his.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised. ‘I’ve been a good many years in this district. I can’t think of anybody less likely to do murder than Luke Croxley.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But there’s good evidence to show you didn’t do it,’ Craft went on, ‘even if we were mugs enough to suspect you.’ He
turned to H.M. ‘Dr Croxley hasn’t been a police-surgeon for nothing. He remembered to keep away from those footprints and not mess them up.’

  ‘I was just wonderin’ about that, son.’

  ‘In fact, he stayed a good six feet away all the distance out. Those tracks run, all of them, in straight parallel lines. He couldn’t very well have stood six feet away from the nearest victim, facing the same direction and never even turning sideways, while he shot ’em both at body-range. No: his testimony’s all right. We’ll accept it.’

  This time I put even more acid into my thanks.

  Craft ignored it. ‘But you see where that puts us, Sir Henry. I won’t ask you to come and look at the bodies, because they were pretty badly smashed up by the fall and by knocking along the coast all this time …’

  ‘They weren’t,’ I said, ‘unrecognizable?’

  Craft grinned: a sickly sort of grin, as even he seemed to realize.

  ‘Oh, no. No funny business about that. They’re the bodies of Mrs Wainright and Mr Sullivan, all right. All the same you ought to be glad you didn’t have to do the post-mortem.’

  (Rita, Rita, Rita!)

  ‘But as I was saying to Sir Henry, I’m going to have a packet of trouble on my hands with this case. I want to try my hand at it. And if there’s any advice you could give me, I’d appreciate it a very great deal.

  ‘You see how it stands. Two persons were shot as they stood on the very edge of a cliff. The murderer couldn’t have climbed up or down that cliff. Presumably he couldn’t fly. Yet he approached them and got away without leaving a footprint on that whole expanse of soil. If we hadn’t found the weapon later, it would have been a perfect crime passing as a double suicide. It may be a perfect crime even yet. I’d be interested to hear what you think about it.’

  SEVEN

  H.M.’s cigar had gone out. He blinked at it in a displeased way, and turned the stump round in his fingers.

  ‘Y’know,’ he observed. ‘I once told Masters –’

  ‘Chief Inspector Masters?’

  ‘That’s right. I once told Masters he had a habit of getting tangled up in the goddamnedest cases I ever heard tell of. It seems to me the Devon County Constabulary can qualify for nearly as high marks. And yet I dunno. There’s reason in this. Cold reason,’ he brooded. ‘What I want is facts; all the facts. So far all I’ve had is a sketchy account from Paul Ferrars, when we thought it was suicide. What’s the rest of the story?’

  ‘Will you tell him about it, Dr Croxley? You’ve followed it from the beginning.’

  I was only too glad.

  If Rita had been murdered, I felt towards her murderer a black hatred – a personal vindictiveness – beyond anything Christian charity allows. I was thinking, too, of Alec collapsed and fainting in the hall. So I started at the beginning, and told the story pretty much as I have outlined it in this narrative.

  Though it was a long recital, they did not seem to find it tedious. We were interrupted only twice. The first time was when Paul Ferrars arrived to claim his guest. He was chased away by H.M. with more lurid language than a man usually employs towards his host; but Ferrars only grinned and retired. On the second occasion, Mrs Harping, my housekeeper, came bowling down the path with a hand-bell to say that lunch was ready.

  Mrs Harping is indispensable. She bosses us and doses us – there is something odd about the spectacle of two doctors meekly swallowing home-remedies – and washes our shirts and cooks our meals. It required some firmness to say I wanted two extra plates added for lunch, the meal to be served here under the apple-tree, at a time when food was just beginning to get scarce. But I got my way, and finished telling the story after the cloth was cleared.

  ‘Well, sir?’ prompted Craft. ‘Does anything strike you?’

  H.M., who had been occupied with the steering-handle of the wheel-chair, turned his sharp little eyes sideways.

  ‘Oh, my son! Lots of things. The first point – but we’ll let that go, for the moment. There’s other points almost as interesting.’

  He sat silent for a moment, ruffling his hands across his big bald head.

  ‘Imprimis, gents, why did somebody have to let the petrol out of the cars as well as cuttin’ the telephone-wires?’

  ‘Assuming,’ I said, ‘that the person who did it was the murderer?’

  ‘Assuming it was anybody you like. What was the purpose of it? Was he tryin’ to prevent discovery of a crime which nobody was supposed to spot as a crime? But how? You weren’t at the North Pole. You were less than half a dozen miles from a police station. Discovery couldn’t have been prevented. Why call attention to the possibility of hokey-pokey in a perfectly straightforward suicide-pact?’

  ‘It might have been done by Johnson.’

  ‘Sure. But I’ll lay you ducats to an old shoe it wasn’t.’

  ‘And the next point?’

  ‘That’s a part of the same foolishness. As our friend Craft says, this murderer has got away with a practically perfect crime. Then the silly dummy goes and chucks the gun down in a public road where it’ll probably be found. Unless –’

  ‘Unless what?’

  H.M. brooded.

  ‘I could bear to hear a lot more about that gun. For instance.’ He blinked at me. ‘When you found the petrol let out of the cars, you set out and foot-slogged to Lyncombe after a telephone. You must have walked by that very same road where Mr Grange later found the automatic. Did you notice it?’

  ‘No; but that’s not surprising. I’d dropped and lost the Wainrights’ electric torch. That road was pretty dark.’

  H.M. attacked Craft.

  ‘Well, then!’ he persisted. ‘You went out there with a squad of coppers, in a car. You must have had lights. You got there, you’ve been tellin’ me, about a quarter to one. Still some time before the thing was found. Did you see the ruddy gun?’

  ‘No. Nothing odd in that either, sir. We were driving in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road.’

  ‘Phooey!’ said H.M., puffing out his cheeks in a richly sinister way, and sitting back to contemplate us fishily. He folded his hands across his corporation and twiddled his thumbs. ‘I don’t say there’s anything rummy in it, you understand. All I want, burn me, is information! Next, that alleged suicide-note. Have you got it?’

  From between the leaves of his notebook Craft took out the paper. It was only, as I have said, a little slip torn from the kitchen memorandum-pad and scrawled on with the pencil that went with it. It said:

  Juliet died a lady. No recriminations. No putting it off. I love everybody. Good-bye.

  H.M. read the words aloud, and I had to put up a hand to shade my eyes. He regarded me sombrely.

  ‘Dr Croxley, have you seen this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it in Mrs Wainwright’s handwriting?’

  ‘It is and it isn’t. I should say yes: that it’s her handwriting under very strong emotion.’

  ‘Looky here, Doctor.’ H.M. was powerfully embarrassed. ‘I can see you were fond of this gal. I’m not askin’ these things out of idle curiosity. Do you think Mrs Wainright meant to kill herself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, sir,’ burst out Superintendent Craft, whacking his fist down on his knee, ‘that’s just it. That’s the real puzzler. That’s what gets me. If those two were going to kill themselves anyway, why murder ’em?’

  This was a point I had been trying to put clearly myself. But H.M. shook his head.

  ‘Nothing much to that, son. Not necessarily, I mean. They could have meant to kill themselves, and lost their nerve. The same thing has happened lots of times. Then a certain person, who’s determined to see ’em both dead, steps in and shoots. Only …’

  He continued to scowl, ticking his thumb and second finger against the note, as some obscure thought bothered him like dyspepsia.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ he said. ‘This is what is humorously known to the press as a crime of passion. There’s no n
eed to go star-gazin’ after motives. Somebody either (a) hated Mrs Wainright so much because she was carrying on with Sullivan, or (b) hated Sullivan so much because he was carrying on with Mrs Wainright, that both of ’em had to be knocked off.’

  ‘Looks like it, sir,’ agreed Craft.

  ‘Therefore we got to rake up scandal whether we like it or not. Speakin’ personally,’ observed H.M., with great candour, ‘I got a low mind and a great taste for scandal myself. According to what the doctor tells us, this Alec Wainright believed his wife had been carrying on with somebody long before she met the late lamented Sullivan.’

  ‘She swore to me –’ I began.

  H.M. was apologetic.

  ‘Sure. I know. All the same, I’d like a bit of testimony that’s not quite so dewy-eyed and prejudiced as hers. When can we have a word with the husband?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask Tom about that. Not immediately, I should say, and possibly not for some time.’

  ‘In the meantime, did you ever hear anything about swoonin’ love-affairs?’

  ‘Never.’

  H.M. blinked at Craft. ‘What about you, son?’

  ‘That’s not much in my line.’ The superintendent hesitated. ‘But I’m bound to admit I never heard anything against the lady. And things do get about, you know, in little places like this.’

  ‘What we want,’ said H.M., handing the suicide-note back to Craft, ‘is a woman’s touch in this, and a woman’s fine serene unconsciousness of the laws of slander. It’d interest me strangely to have a word with that gal there.’ He nodded his head in the direction of Molly Grange’s house. ‘She strikes me as bein’ a sensible bit of goods, with her eyes open. What’s more, a little causerie with her father –’

  ‘We could go over there now,’ Craft suggested. He consulted his watch. ‘It’s pretty late in the afternoon, and Mr Grange ought to be home before long.’

  H.M. fumbled at the side of the wheel-chair. The whirl of the motor throbbed out against stillness, growing to its steady pop-pop-pop which carried as far as the High Street. It had an instant response. Ears were on the alert, tails quivered, bodies grew tense. A distant din of barking rose in challenge. H.M. squinted round evilly.