The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  … The time was nineteen minutes past ten o’clock.

  Sergeant Arnott had sent an officer back to Harford Street Station to report and to summon an ambulance and a doctor. This man found that an inspector of the C.I.D. was in the charge-room. He had listened and had taken matters in hand; he covered the hundred-and-eighty yards between the station and the scene of the crime at a rush. Sergeant Arnott sighed in relief as the inspector pushed through the cordon and hurriedly he recounted all he had done, and had learned … Into the top of the square, from Edgware Road, a clanging ambulance-car, from St. Asaph’s Hospital, Paddington, turned.

  … The time was twenty-two minutes past ten o’clock.

  “Good evening, Inspector Templeton—good evening, Sergeant Arnott”—this was a very steady voice—“What’s the trouble?”

  The two officers saluted. Each recognised the newcomer; each with differing emotions. To the sergeant, the advent of Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham, from his stately house—Number 24, Bellington Square, W.i.—was almost as the advent of doom to his career. P.C. Pentony had been on special detail … had been guarding the residence of this officer of State, as always it was guarded; by day and by night. And a man who had talked to a maid in that house had been murdered—almost on the doorstep and actually within sight of the warden.

  On the contrary, the C.I.D. man welcomed Brantyngham. Inspector Templeton knew Sir Richard, not alone as a Third Service Chief, but as a clever doctor and one who had power to advance by his influence what years of careful service, otherwise, could not move. He felt that here, at last, was his chance to display himself, to the finest advantage.…

  “Man, at present unknown, Sir Richard, shot through the head—dead, Sir Richard.”

  Sir Richard Brantyngham examined the man under the clustered coverings of many capes and the glowing of electric lamps.

  “I’ll have him taken into my house, Inspector,” Sir Richard quietly remarked. “He is not dead, nor has he been shot. There’s not the slightest chance for him if he’s taken off in the ambulance; a single jolt will end him.… Tell the ambulance orderlies to bring a stretcher.… Ah—good; here’s a doctor. I shall need help.”

  “Very good, sir!” The Inspector spoke to Sergeant Arnott and this man gave his orders. The heavy mass of curiosity was pressed back, not gently, and the supine body of Harry Greenwood was delicately lifted and borne up the steps to the house. The hospital doctor, conferring with Sir Richard, whom he knew, followed.

  The door of 24, Bellington Square was widely opened, and as the stretcher-bearers passed into the large hall, Sir Richard halted for a moment to scan the railed-in garden, in which the bobbing lines of light made by the police searchers still moved—away at the farthermost end, nearest, now, to Edgware Road.

  Looking so … he saw the black thing … flying.

  Fully a hundred feet above the ground, high above the tallest of the magnificent plane trees that dotted the enclosure—dim in the sailing snow—it sped along; it seemed a ball of blackness, madly sportive. The air in the square was very still, yet a movement of currents was indicated at that height usurped by the flying thing. For it bounced aloft in a mighty arc; lofting strangely, too—as though it had impetus from more cause than the little high-crying wind above the house-tops—cutting aerial angles and graceful curves and gyratory figures, all admirably … Until it swerved, lost power, and made a sudden swoop downward, until it fell below the level of the highest eaves, where no wind was. Then it shot away in an oblique line—to scrape across the upper twigs of a tree—to be deflected, and so to fall … into the roadway almost at the feet of Sergeant Arnott, as he stood at the tail-board of the ambulance.

  It was a hat; a simple bowler hat—the one that Harry Greenwood had worn, and that which P.C. Pentony could not find—a bowler hat … yet it battered into the slushy snow with the sounding weight of a hammer blow. It crashed heavily, and its brim broke off … and a long rain of golden discs rolled from its ruin.

  Sir Richard Brantyngham took the wrecked thing, and the golden discs, from the sergeant. He beckoned, and Arnott followed him indoors. The door of Number 24, Bellington Square closed on a hundred gaping faces.

  … The time was twenty-six minutes past ten o’clock.

  II

  Sir Richard Brantyngham took up one of the three champagne goblets he had ordered to be brought him. He poured in it a few drops of pure alcohol which he obtained from Doctor Fletchley’s case of drugs and instruments. He ignited the spirit and watched it flare within the thin glass hemisphere … and allowed the newly sterilised vessel to cool.

  He next took a pair of sterile forceps and went over to the chair on which Greenwood’s jacket lay. From the bloodstained left shoulder he carefully plucked five pieces of ice, none larger than a pea.

  He let these fragments tinkle into the prepared vessel and instantly covered them.

  Only now did he manifest interest in Doctor Fletchley’s final work on Greenwood’s moaning body. He watched the swift stitches that the surgeon was making in the left shoulder. His own turn had already been served: he had worried like a delicately determined dog to help Fletchley in his major operation of setting to rights the back of the poor skull and the alleviation of danger from the injured throat.

  “Miraculous escape the artery had—what?”

  Doctor Fletchley nodded without looking up.

  “About the nearest thing I’ve ever seen,” he agreed.

  “D’you think he’ll make it, Fletchley?”

  “Don’t see why he shouldn’t; you gave him the only chance. Not a bad physique for a youngster. Yes, I think he’ll get over this—it’s that damned base I’m fearing.”

  “So am I.” Brantyngham was very grave. “I’m far from satisfied … believe you’ll find a smash, under X-rays.”

  “Aye—before that!” Greenwood began to stir. “Look at him; he’s showing up … very like it!”

  “Poor devil! He’d better be taken away as soon as you’ve tied that lot, don’t you agree?”

  “Certainly! I’ll only be a minute or so longer. Then, if I can use your phone, I’ll prepare ’em up at St. Asaph’s for what’s coming.”

  “The whole thing’s absolutely beyond me,” Fletchley continued. “Simply can’t make head or tail of it. How the devil a man can suffer a cracked cranium from a stab, I’m at a loss to determine! Jove!—if he snuffs it, my evidence at the inquest’ll put a new point into medical—‘ju’ … I’m baffled!”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t let it worry, Fletchley,” Sir Richard drawled. “I realise your quandry, but take advice from an old hand in such relation—never allow surprise at the phenomenal to fester into concern, else your peace of mind will suffer beyond all remedy. Admittedly the whole affair is a maddening riddle, but just let it rest at that; what sense is there in fraying nerves about it?” He mused; smiled obliquely at the eager-looking inspector and said, softly: “Look at Templeton here—he’s all but springing at your neck, to throttle out of you what you mean by stating that Greenwood was stabbed, when he’s already as sure as light that the fellow was shot.”

  “He—he was shot!” declared the Inspector. “Not much doubt about that, I should say.”

  Doctor Fletchley raised his shaggy, sandy head and glared over the curves of his pince-nez.

  “I said that this man was stabbed! You C.I.D. fellows are just too confoundedly omnipotent, on occasion—for all that, I’ve yet to find one of you capable of teaching me my own business, sir! This man was stabbed—was seriously injured, if you like that better—by a blow from some sharp and triangular instrument that was driven downwards with tremendous force; a blow that cracked the left base of the skull first—that tore the neck and the left shoulder last. Nothing more certain than that, Inspector!” He rounded on Sir Richard. “You substantiate that?”

  “Without qualification, Fletchley.”

  So buffeted, Inspector Templeton became dogged.

  “With all respects to you, Sir Rich
ard—”

  “Here, Templeton—pull up! You’re in charge of this case; it’s essentially a police affair … up to now. Don’t you fret your soul about undue respects. Say what you like—don’t mind me!”

  “Thank you, Sir Richard. I mayn’t be able to teach you your job, Doctor, but the same salt’s on your bird: I know mine. And, knowing it, Doctor, I’ll take a dickens of a lot of convincing that those wounds were caused by stabbing. What about the scream and the sound of the shot? How d’you get over those? So far as I can go, at present, what’s more feasible than that the fellow was shot at from a distance—the bullet striking his shoulder first, glancing up to cut the side of his neck and then glancing again—to smash him on the lower bulge of his head, so fracturing the skull?”

  “I—I tell you, once and for all, Inspector, this was a downwards driven blow!”

  “Then the bullet could have been fired, say, from an upper window in this square; that would yield you the point and still fit in with known facts.”

  “Really? Then will you tell me something else that my poor talents cannot grapple with—where’s the bullet? You saw that wound in the shoulder; it had no point of exit … And do you think I’m such a fool as to imperil my career by stitching up a cavity without being certain beyond all shadow of doubt that no foreign body lay embedded in it?” Doctor Fletchley snorted. “No, Inspector, you’ll have to try again; that cat won’t fight—this—is—not—a—bullet—wound … it’s purely and simply a stab!”

  “I’m very much afraid, Inspector Templeton,” Sir Richard Brantyngham quietly said, “that you’ll have to drop your bullet theory. Eliminate it altogether, now! You’ll never get anywhere otherwise. Doctor Fletchley is absolutely sure, and so am I, that this ragged wound, despite the complication of the fractured base, is in every way compatible with a theorising about there being a downwards driven blow, akin to a stabbing, delivered on this man’s upper body.”

  “You—you told me that you heard the scream and the sound of the shot, and—”

  “Inspector Templeton—please! I told you nothing of the kind, sir! When you first questioned me, I most deliberately referred to: ‘a shrill and scream-like sound, succeeded by a detonation, as that one might attribute to the discharge of a fire-arm’ … Come, get your wits to work—were those, or were they not, my actual words?”

  “They were your actual words, Sir Richard. But I cannot see, save that they are guarded, they are any different from the making of a definite statement to the effect that you heard this man scream out in fear and then you heard the shot that knocked him out.”

  Sir Richard Brantyngham sighed and turned to Sergeant Arnott. “Would you mind, Sergeant? … Ring up the Senior United Forces’ Club—ask if Lord Passingford is present, and, if he is—tell him to come to this house as fast as he can.”

  The sergeant saluted and went off to the telephone. Sir Richard left the group in the hall and entered his study. A safe door clanged and he returned … to place in Inspector Templeton’s hands a warrant, given under the twin seals of two of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State for Home and Foreign Affairs …

  “As this man never uttered a scream and as a shot was not fired in this square to-night, Inspector Templeton, and, as you will not rid your mind of a prejudicial theory of ‘shooting,’ that annuls all your efforts from the outset … I shall take charge of this case from now. From now you act only under my orders!”

  III

  … The foregoing I have edited and accurately transcribed from Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham’s minutely elaborate notes on the case of “The Flying Hat,” entered in his journals. On my arrival at 24, Bellington Square I found that Greenwood had been removed to St. Asaph’s Hospital, and that Sir Richard had received a report from P.C. Pentony, on the result of the search of the central gardens of the square. Essentially, now, does my task begin:

  For all that every inch of the snow-covered surface had been scoured—time after time—not a trace of a footstep was to be found in those gardens. The police searchers left long black lines in the grass wherever they moved; lines that cut down through the lightly-lain snow, betraying all well. Naught save these remained … attention alone had been centred on three small holes, not far from the scene of the crime, which marked the snow as points of an isosceles triangle, four-feet long in the base and six-feet seven inches from basal points to apex. Since no other similar markings were seen, these the police were inclined to treat perfunctorily. Brantyngham smiled on hearing of them.

  P.C. Pentony, eager no doubt to wipe off the black patch on his service, indicated in Sergeant Arnott’s earlier attitude toward him—and, strangely enough, appointed control-officer of the squad of searchers by reason, also, of that attitude—made some very fine points. He had every vertical railing examined: none was loose in its socket; none was bent; not one had in any way been started. Now, beneath the rather savage-looking ornamental spikes, topping these eight-feet-high rails, is a flat horizontal rail. Pentony, brilliant fellow, had the snow that lay on top of this flat rail carefully inspected. In no place was its unbroken surface marred. Apparently then no one had got out of that inner plot by way of clambering over the railings … and of the residents’ gates … all save the one that Pentony had opened with his private key, were not only locked, but chained and re-padlocked.

  Further than all this, P.C. Pentony took it upon himself to carry out certain other tests. He ran from the scene of the crime to each of the boundary rails in turn; allowed two minutes—in mind—for that time necessary for an agile man to clamber over the railings and then assessed that, at the very lowest estimate, a running and athletic man could not hope to escape from the inner garden, via the railings, in a time under four minutes. And, so bonded by seconds and moments is the chronology of this case, such a period would have certainly admitted the possibility of that man’s capture.… Let it be recalled that the square was fully aroused within two minutes, and the police were already in the central gardens, searching, within five minutes of the detonation (I shall not call it “shot”). Surely anyone decamping from the scene would have been noticed.…

  Eliminated, the possibility of a shot from some upper window of the square; admitted, a stabbing … necessitated therefore: some human agency that was in very close proximity to the victim. Then—how had that human being escaped? How had it consummated the crime? Trackless and invisible, that agent—entity—being, call it what you will; how had it struck and felled and gone from all men’s knowing, within a few short minutes; out of a well-lighted quadrangle, alive with police officers and stirring people? Such was the riddle Brantyngham set himself to solve!

  He began to work in earnest when he looked over the “property” found in Greenwood’s pockets; when he carefully examined the man’s clothing—his shoes, stocking-feet pulled over holed socks; his miserable rag of a dirty shirt; his greasy waistcoat; his blood-stained jacket … and his exquisitely woven silk underwear—that which was labelled by a Bond Street name, that only uncared price purchases …

  “Funny kit for an out-of-work dental mechanic, worth two-and-threepence-’a-penny and fourteen pawn-tickets—eh?” grunted Brantyngham, looking at that labelled name.

  “Damned funny,” I agreed.

  “Beg your pardon, Sir Richard,” said the massive Inspector Templeton, “but I’ve been able to get a bit of news out of that hysterical kitchen-maid of yours—this fellow Greenwood was a waiter, not a dental mechanic!”

  Sir Richard calmly looked up and smoothed his mane of iron-grey hair. A smile was twitching around his lean mouth that seemed a preface to a laugh, but one I knew—from long and sorry knowledge—to be a disguise.

  “I shouldn’t question the point, Inspector Templeton.” I laughed. “Rather shall we ask him to prove it …”

  “Proof—proof, you ask?” Brantyngham was started from his mood, like a terrier started at a sudden rat; I was wary enough not to smile! “What proof d’you want more than this?” And he poi
nted to the front of the waistcoat. “Apart from the physical peculiarities of the man—sorry you didn’t get here in time to scan ’em, Passingford; rather interesting—this waistcoat tells me as much as is necessary to know.”

  “His waistcoat—?”

  “Yes; d’you see these?” Brantyngham pointed to a clutter of waxen spottings about the middle button of the garment. Greasy, pink, brown and reddish were they … and long veinings of rusty-looking dust adhered to the wax and so deeply entered the very fabric of the thing as to obliterate its rough texture of warp and weft. “Those marks were made by dental wax, dropped on the serge in a molten state, and the rusty dust is that of finely pulverised—or, shall I say, milled—vulcanite. I don’t know whether you are aware of the fact, Inspector, but a dental mechanic in making false dentures first of all arranges artificial teeth on waxen plates, these being formed upon plaster-of-Paris models of the human mouth into which the finished product has to go.… Very well then … Wax and plaster and vulcanite—this last being the material of which false denture-plates are usually fashioned.

  “Here, on this waistcoat are distinct traces of two of these materials; especially about a horizontal patch which coincides with the wearer’s level of body, when seated, at a work-bench. And a dental mechanic’s bench is usually shaped like that of a working jeweller—a table-like structure with a bay in it, in which to press the round of the upper abdomen. Here are markings at that level, as I have said … they betray as much as they help to prove.

  “Then again, had you taken perfect note of his physical peculiarities, you would have found a curious malformation of Greenwood’s right index finger, and another of the inner curve of his right thumb.… Flat and shining surfaces, these … and the nails were bevelled cross-wise, deeper than the most exquisitely manicured Viennese beauty dare allow herself to go, in pursuit of V-contours.… Those nails had been ground away to their quicks on the inner rounds of each digit.