Bleeding Hooks

by Harriet Rutland

  ’’I don’t see why,” remarked Gunn. “What was there to be afraid of? Someone had to find her.”

  “Yes; but Pet had that habit of jumping on to people. You know how you hated it, Pussy. And I never knew she had a weak heart.”

  “Well? I don’t see what that had to do with it,” said Pussy. “What on earth were you worrying about?”

  Claude gazed at her, and the old look of panic was in his eyes.

  “Don’t you understand?” he cried. “Can’t you see that I killed her?”

  Chapter 25

  “Piggy, we’ve got to do something,” remarked Pussy Partridge as she sipped her third pink gin.

  It was nearly midnight, and the hotel seemed deserted, all the visitors except themselves having apparently gone to bed.

  “Oh Lord!” groaned Piggy, levering up his long body from the low, inadequate chair in which he was sprawling, “can’t you even keep quiet for an hour? We’d better go and play billiards, then, though I shall see enough balls for Snooker – this is my fifth double whisky since dinner.”

  “If you drank a few doubles in the morning, you might see a few more fish,” retorted Pussy. “I’m not going to play billiards, and that’s flat.”

  “Thank God for that!” murmured Gunn, sinking back into his chair, and smiling beatifically. Then, struck by a sudden thought, he exclaimed, “You don’t mean that you want to go out for a drive, do you? For God’s sake, Pussy!”

  “Take it easy, my lamb,” replied Pussy calmly. “I don’t want to do anything or go anywhere now. I mean that we’ve got to do something about Claude.”

  Gunn gulped down the remainder of his whisky.

  “Oh yes, rather!” he agreed enthusiastically. “Of course we must. Old Claude is a jolly good sort. We must do something about him.” He sank down still further in the chair. “But the question is – what?”

  Pussy wriggled impatiently.

  “You’re drunk,” she said. “But you’re not so drunk that you can’t do a bit of straight thinking, and your brains aren’t so near the floor that they’re in danger of crashing if you shake them up a bit.”

  She got up, and hauled him to a sitting position; she tousled his evening-sleek hair, and smacked each cheek; then she dropped a kiss lightly on the end of his nose, and slipped back again into her chair. Gunn held his long arms out to her, but she shook her head.

  “No. No love-making,” she said emphatically. “Only thinking.”

  She poised a long fore-finger against her temple, and wrinkled her forehead.

  Gunn smoothed down his hair.

  “You’re a tantalizing little devil,” he remarked dispassionately. “I can’t think why I put up with you.”

  “Sh!” warned Pussy. “Think! If we don’t do something about it, they’ll have Claude hung for murder.”

  “Hanged,” corrected Gunn.

  “I’d rather say hung,” returned Pussy as if that settled the matter, which, as far as she was concerned, it certainly did.

  Gunn eyed his empty glass, and stretched a languid arm towards the bell.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” said Pussy. “You’ve had enough to stimulate that thing you call your brain. I’m not going to let you get sozzled.”

  Gunn pushed his hand into his pocket, and sighed.

  “I suppose you want me to play Dr. Watson to your Holmes,” he said. “All right, I’ll buy it.”

  Pussy looked perplexed.

  “Dr. Watson?” she repeated. “I thought the doctor’s name was Something-hyphen-Roberts.”

  “Skip it,” said Gunn. “I might have known you couldn’t understand. Your education is practically non-existent.”

  “I understand everyone as long as they don’t spout quotations at me,” replied Pussy, “but what with the Major quoting Jorrocks about ‘riding over the sticks’, and –”

  “He said ‘rowed over the Styx’,” amended Gunn.

  “Same thing.”

  “It may be to you, darling –”

  “It is,” finished Pussy firmly. “But as I was saying –”

  “What you were saying was absolute drivel, as usual,” he said, “but what you want to say is this.” He leaned his arms on the small, glass-topped table which held their glasses, and gazed at her solemnly. “If Mrs. Mumsby had been murdered – and may God, if there is a God, rest her soul, if she had a soul! – Claude thinks he killed her by letting his monkey jump on to her while she was asleep, giving her a heart attack. If something isn’t done about it pretty soon, one of two things will happen. Either he will be found guilty, and hanged” – he paused, but Pussy made no comment – “and hanged,” he repeated, “or else he will be driven by this fear to commit suicide. He’s that sort, poor devil!”

  “And, of course, he’s innocent.”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed Gunn. “But how do you know that? That story about the monkey does sound a bit farfetched.”

  Pussy leaned her arms on the table, and looked hard at Gunn.

  “Why, my simple idiot? Because we know him. He’s our friend.”

  “Very commendable of you, Miss Partridge, I’m sure,” said Gunn, in what was, he considered, a very fair imitation of a public prosecutor’s voice, “but may I ask how long young Mr. Weston has been a friend of yours?”

  “About three weeks.”

  “And did you know anything about him prior to that? Had you ever seen him or heard of him before? Do you know where he lives, or what kind of life he leads, or who his mother was?”

  “No, of course I don’t.”

  “Do you know who murdered Mrs. Mumsby?”

  “No!”

  “Then how can you possibly know that Claude Weston is innocent?”

  Pussy banged her hand on the table.

  “Of course I know, Piggy. Claude is our sort. We speak the same language; you know we do. He’s the sort of fellow we’d take around to dances and parties, and introduce to our friends. He’s the sort you’d lend your last quid to – oh, all that sort of thing. Why do you ask such inane questions when you know the answers as well as I do?”

  Gunn, now quite clear-headed, nodded.

  “I know, and you know,” he admitted, “but you won’t convince the police – meaning Mr. Whitehall Winkley – so easily. We shall have to do a great deal more than just feeling in our bones that he’s innocent, if we’re going to help Claude. Once Mr. Winkley tumbles to the fact that Claude found Mrs. Mumsby’s body before the ghillie did, he’ll get more suspicious than ever. After all, Claude’s story is a bit thin, you know. It sounds as if he’s invented it to cover up the fact that he knows more about her death than he’s admitted before. The monkey was actually found with Mrs. Mumsby, by the ghillie, and it looks as if Claude destroyed the little beast in case it should give us a fresh clue. The whole affair simply stinks of Claude.”

  “What on earth do you mean?” asked Pussy. “I thought you said he was innocent.”

  “I did. But if everyone in the hotel knew it was a case of murder and voted for the murderer, I’ll bet that they’d all choose Claude. The setting of the murder is like him. The monkey. The fly that must have been slipped from the gut by what I might call the Claudian Knot – I don’t suppose that will bring the light of intelligence to your eyes. No? I thought not And you remember when we were talking about the preparation of Scheele’s acid, I said that every schoolboy knows the chemicals used in it? Well, so he does. He uses them when he gives conjuring displays: they can be used in the very trick that Claude did when he turned water to milk and wine to ink. Of course it’s a bit amateurish, I dare say, but then some of his tricks were, you know, and it does show that he might have been familiar with the stuff. Besides, the whole thing is so slick and clever, just like his performance that evening, and his hysterical tantrums may be invented to take our minds off what really happened, just as his patter takes them off his sleight of hand.”

  “Well, we know it wasn’t Claude,” said Pussy, “so why not try to find out who it was
, instead of trying to pin it on to him?”

  “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Victim, Mrs. Mumsby, a wealthy widow without relatives, living for four years in a fishing hotel for reasons which we all know. As no other attempt was made on her life during the four years, it would appear that the murderer is someone who has never been to the hotel before. Suspects, therefore, are narrowed down to ourselves – if we exclude the time when you wore rompers – the Pandas, the Westons, and old Fish-eyes. It couldn’t have been us, so –”

  “I don’t see that you can cut the others out like that,” interrupted Pussy. “It might be someone who had always hated her, and never had the opportunity to murder her before. Or she may only recently have done whatever it was that caused her to be murdered. Or she might have been blackmailing someone – and they’d just got fed up with it.”

  “Yes, I see your point,” said Gunn, stroking a reflective chin which was beginning to get rough in readiness for the morning’s shave. “The last straw on the camel’s back, or the last twist to the lion’s tail. But I’d like to bet that your reason in mentioning all this is that you hate to leave out Major Jeans.”

  “I only want to be fair. After all, he does fancy himself as a lady-killer, and for all we know, he may be one in all senses of the words. He made an exact copy of the fly that killed her. He admits that he bought cyanide to poison moths. ‘Bleeding Hooks’ is his pet expression, and it might be his idea of a good joke to kill her like that.”

  “And you only want to be fair,” mocked Gunn. “God help the man you wanted to be unfair to! I think that if Major Jeans had killed her, he wouldn’t have called attention to it by making that particular fly for you.”

  “He might be plumb crazy so that he always gives the same fly to the person he’s going to kill – you know, like the man in Love from a Stranger, who always gave his victims the same scarf. Perhaps I’m to be his next victim.”

  But she had to admit that, when expressed in words, the case against Major Jeans seemed less convincing.

  “Then there’s General Sir Courtney Haddox, to give him his full title. Mr. Winkley met him looking for a fly which he’d lost near Mrs. Mumsby’s body, and he’s a queer old cuss altogether. But I can’t see any motive. He was always very nice to the Merry Widow, and she positively preened herself when he came anywhere near her. She adored his title, and he wasn’t above feeling flattered by her admiration.”

  “That all gives Miss Haddox a motive,” said Pussy. “It’s pretty obvious that he preferred Mrs. Mumsby’s company to hers, and I can’t say that I exactly blame him. His sister gets on his nerves; anyone can see that. Every time she says ‘Tight Lines!’ he gets tight lines round his mouth, and he hates the way she chases after him, and spies on him. Mrs. Mumsby was just the type of hefty, common woman to appeal to him and make him feel no end of a fellow, and his sister hated that, too.”

  “But it wasn’t his sister who was murdered.” remarked Gunn, “and although she had a motive, and always went about saying she hated Mrs. Mumsby, I can’t see her committing murder somehow. She could never forget she’s a lady.” He hesitated for a moment, then went on, “We needn’t consider your mother any more. We’ve talked ourselves sick about that.”

  “I know you think I’m queer to suspect her when I don’t suspect Claude,” said Pussy, “but if she weren’t my mother, she wouldn’t be a particular friend of mine. Oh, I suppose that sounds callous, but parents don’t try very hard to be friendly to their children. They never tell you about their thoughts, or how they used to feel when they were young, and to hear them talk, you’d think that they’d never done or said a wrong thing ever since they were born. I really know more about Claude after only three weeks than I’ve learned about mother in twenty years. I asked her what she was doing by the lake when Mrs. Mumsby died, but she flared up at me, and went off in a huff. She didn’t deny it, though. Wouldn’t it be awful to be the daughter of a murderess?”

  “Oh, forget it!” said Gunn sharply. “I just don’t believe it.”

  “Nor do I really,” admitted Pussy. “Who’s next? The Pandas?”

  “They’re far more likely. After all, what we heard him say was as good as a confession. If he hasn’t murdered Mrs. Mumsby, he’s done something nearly as bad, and, what’s more, she’s in it, too.”

  “It seems queer to go round murdering anyone on your honeymoon,” said Pussy. “What about the ghillie?”

  “Wrong kind of crime,” returned Gunn, who now sounded quite sure of himself. “He might have hit her over the head in a fit of anger, but this fly-hook business was definitely more cold-blooded than that. It had all been thought out beforehand.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Evans, then. She was going to leave them some money, so they had a motive.”

  Gunn shook his head.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “She was murdered before she made a will leaving them the money. They would have taken good care that they would benefit by her death before killing her, or it would have been like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. No hotel-keeper in his senses would murder his best-paying guest.”

  “No one in his senses would commit murder anyway,” retorted Pussy. “What about Jack the Ripper, or whatever the doctor calls himself?”

  “That’s rather bright of you,” admitted Gunn. “I did think it strange that he should have been within hailing distance of the crime when you’d expect him to have been having his after-luncheon nap, or doing his rounds.”

  “Sounds more like the milkman,” replied Pussy. “I’d be inclined to suspect him if he had a motive, and Thomas Lloyd, too. It seems too much of a coincidence that two people who had no business there should have happened to come along at the right moment. We ought to get Mr. Winkley to make a few inquiries in their direction; he’d find out more than we should. Hallo! Who on earth’s coming into the hotel at this time of night?”

  The hall door opened quietly, and four men tiptoed inside with elaborate carefulness. The leader put his forefinger to his lips, said “Ssh!” loudly to his companions, and, with consummate buffoonery, made elaborate goose-strides into the hall. When he saw Pussy and Gunn, he stopped, and they all broke into roars of laughter.

  Their bodies were padded with layer upon layer of woollens and tweeds, topped with leather coats or mackintoshes, and they carried rugs in addition to the full paraphernalia of fishing. Their faces were red, and their eyes bloodshot.

  “You don’t mean to say that you’ve been on the lake till this hour?” demanded Gunn, and Pussy realized that these were the four Welshmen who were so rarely seen in the hotel.

  “Oh yes,” said one of the men. “We came for the fishing, and by God! we mean to get our money’s worth.”

  “You don’t know what real fishing is until you’re out with the dawn and home with the milk,” said another.

  “But how can you see your flies in the dark?” protested Gunn.

  “Oh, we fish by instinct,” was the reply. “The two boats keep together, and we have a bit of a sing-song, and a bit of a drink, you know. It’s all the fun in the world, man.”

  “I should think you’re hungry by now,” said Pussy.

  “So we are, miss, so we are. But the lady of the house doesn’t forget us, God bless her. We shall find our supper waiting upstairs for us. I’ve a bottle up in my room, if you and the lady would care to join me. No? Well, no offence, I hope.”

  He went up the stairs, and the other three followed him.

  “What about them?” whispered Pussy.

  Gunn smiled.

  “I’m afraid not,” he replied. “Much as I should like to think it. They were all on the opposite side of the lake when she was killed, and that’s three miles away.”

  “Then there’s only Mr. Weston left.”

  “He’s the least likely one of the lot,” said Gunn, “so if this were a thriller, he’d definitely turn out to be the murderer, I suppose. But he was never alone because his ghillie was sitting in the bo
at within sight nearly all the time, and when he wasn’t there, Claude was with his father. Besides, what possible motive could he have had?”

  Pussy yawned.

  “He didn’t like Mrs. Mumsby making all that fuss of Claude,” she said. “But that’s just silly. Mother doesn’t always like Major Jeans making a fuss over me, but she hasn’t murdered him so far. So we’re back where we started. Come on, I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”

  “We’d better turn the lights out,” said Gunn, getting up and stretching himself.

  But when the hall lights were turned out, they saw that the light had been left burning in the lounge, and they sauntered along the darkened corridor towards it. Gunn touched the switch, leaving only the glow of the dying fire to illuminate the room, then drew Pussy, unresisting, to a low settee, where they kissed, and kissed, and kissed again.

  Suddenly Gunn held her away from him, and listened.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he whispered, and they waited in silence.

  Footsteps, which sounded muffled even on the bare tiles of the long, central corridor of the hotel, moved nearer, and halted outside the door. Then, their eyes now fully accustomed to the darkness, they saw a tall, lean figure move stealthily forward towards the fireplace. A hand was thrust out, and dropped a packet of some substance on to the embers, which coloured them, as if chemically, until they faded into blackness.

  They heard a little exclamation of satisfaction, and the figure withdrew silently from the room, and passed as silently along the corridor. They followed as quietly as they could, and were just in time to see a tall figure, attired in Jaeger dressing-gown, and heavy felt slippers, retreating up the lighted stairs.

  “My hat!” exclaimed Gunn. “General Haddox!”