by Bruce, Leo
If Mr Gorringer had been tearing his hair he showed no sign of it as he stood squarely on the hearthrug of the Residents’ Lounge awaiting Carolus. His mood seemed to be one of Olympian and icy calm tempered with haughty disillusionment.
“Good morning, Deene,” he said in a sad and lofty voice. “I have, as you see, been forced to abandon my hard-earned repose to come here and cope with this disaster. I felt it my duty to see what fragments of the school’s reputation might yet be salvaged.”
“What disaster? Not Hollingbourne? ”
“It is useless, on this occasion, for you to be evasive, Deene. I, nay, the world has seen the newspapers of yesterday in which your name is blazoned—yes, sir, blazoned—as that of an investigator whose views run counter to those held by the police.”
“I thought you would be delighted when I tried to clear Lady Drumbone’s nephew.”
“But at what cost! ‘Senior History Master at the Queen’s School, Newminster’, I quote but one of the descriptions. What do you suppose the Governing Body will say to this? ”
“You’ve heard nothing yet, headmaster. Wait till I make my full statement to the police, presently. It really is a bit of a shocker, this case. Another murder was attempted last night.”
“And who,” asked Mr Gorringer in his Jehovah voice, “who was the intended victim? ”
“I was,” said Carolus. “But you’ll hear all that presently. When Detective Inspector Bowler arrives.”
Mr Gorringer sank into a chair.
“There are moments, Deene, when I feel that the responsibilities of my position are too great.”
“Have a drink,” suggested Carolus. “I could do with one myself. I was up till almost daybreak. Priggley, see if you can find a waiter.”
A little restored, Mr Gorringer asked at what time Bowler would arrive.
“Soon, I hope. But I had to pull him out of bed in the small hours too, poor chap.”
“Meanwhile, I should like to be er … put in the picture.”
“Good. Priggley will go right through the case with you while I just check my notes.”
They were interrupted some time later by the rather violent entry of Mrs Tuck.
“I been looking everywhere for you. D’you know what They’ve done now? Gone and arrested …”
“Now, Mrs Tuck, I want you as a favour to keep your temper and say nothing more. This is Mr Gorringer, the headmaster of the Queen’s School, Newminster.”
The headmaster’s bow might be described as steely.
“What’ll They do next, I’d like to know? It’s the same with one I met in the hall just now all dressed up like a Turkish admiral who tried to stop me coming in. Pretty soon told him. I suppose they’ll arrest me next.”
She clearly had no intention of leaving, but sat down firmly, and in answer to Carolus’s invitation accepted a stout.
Seeing some facial contortions of the headmaster’s which he took to be interrogative, Carolus said briefly that Mrs Tuck was a friend of his. This did little to allay Mr Gor-ringer’s anxiety.
Bowler arrived looking businesslike, was briefly introduced to Mr Gorringer, and said, “Now I should like this statement of yours, Mr Deene.”
“It seems that Deene has a great deal to account for,” said Mr Gorringer. Then turning to Bowler he explained: “As his employer I feel to some extent implicated, Inspector. I make no secret of the fact that it was I who first suggested that he might be of some assistance to Lady Drumbone, but I little thought that it would lead to such a situation as this! Another corpse! And now, I hear, a further attempt at bloodshed! I begin to ask where this kind of thing will end. Are we, even here, by the fireside as it were, of an English inn, to consider ourselves secure? ”
At that moment there was the sound of violent scuffling outside the door and Mr Gorringer jumped to his feet. But when the door was flung open it revealed Mrs Redlove, somewhat dishevelled, and attended by a young reporter from the local paper.
Her finger shot out at Carolus.
“That’s him! “she shouted, like the monks of Rheims. “That’s the murderer! I should know him anywhere! Saying he was a newspaper man and having me put on my bluey-emerald! He was up there yesterday again, because I saw him and his car went off after the shot was fired last night. You write that down,” she said to the reporter, who complied. “‘ Mrs Redlove of Brook Cottage, Flogmore, Unmasks Murderer’. It was him set the house on fire, too, to destroy the evidence so there’s nothing left of it now only ashes. You can say that. ‘Mrs Redlove finds only ashes where neighbour’s house once stood’.”
Mr Gorringer, conscious of his importance, rose to deal with this interruption.
“I fear you’re making a mistake, madam,” he pronounced. But he got no further.
“It’s no mistake,” said Mrs Redlove, “because I seen him with my own eyes. Photographer, he told me, and Margaret crying her eyes out because he never came and Arthur spilling jam on his new suit. He was up there yesterday doing I don’t know what, and I see his car go off after the other one. Have you got your camera ready? Because someone must go for the police. ‘Mrs Redlove denounces murderer. Arrest of Flogmore Woods killer’.”
Slowly and unwillingly Bowler rose to explain patiently that he was in charge of the case and that if Mrs Redlove had some information for him she could call at his office later. It took some minutes to quieten her, but eventually she left, disappointed rather than reassured.
“Now, Mr Deene,” said Bowler.
Carolus lit a cheroot.
“You won’t need any very long-winded explanations here. But before I just run over the few points I have noticed I should like to see how the facts look to someone who knows them all and is accustomed to this sort of case. Priggley, will you take a pencil and paper and jot down your considered answers to these questions. Richard Hoys-den’s death, (a) Accident? (6) Suicide? (c) Murder? Mrs Lamplow’s death. Same three choices. And in both cases, if accident, how? If suicide, why? If murder, by whom?1 All right, keep that till later.”
“To the point, Deene! “cried Mr Gorringer.
“The point, of course, was the tape-recording. The whole case turns on that. As soon as I heard it I was interested, for I perceived at once that I was dealing with no ordinary intelligence. I also realized that Richard Hoysden had been murdered.”
Mr Gorringer could be relied on for an interpolation.
“Murdered, was he? “he gasped.
“Of course. For the first thing that was noticeable about the words of that recording was that they were read. Richard Hoysden was not a literary type, but even if he were it would obviously be impossible for him to deliver such an oration as that, with apt and word-perfect quotations from Othello, unless he had a script. A man about to shoot himself is unlikely to bother about fine phraseology, but if he has an exhibitionistic desire to display it, he must write down what he wants to say. According to Alan Bourne, who found the body, no script was there.
“The next noticeable point about that confession was the way it started. “Oh, I killed her all right …” What does that suggest to you? That it was an answer to other words, that is to say that what Richard was reading was a speech from a play. Its whole tenor suggests that, apart from anything else, and although I had not the advantage of having known Richard, I gathered that this was what the voice used in the recording suggested, too. I remember Pippa’s very expressive remark ‘the voice was Richard’s all right, but it was not Richard speaking’. I also remembered Toffin saying that Richard had ‘an unusually rich and dramatic voice’.
“Then there was that very important expletive at the end. ‘Hell! ‘said Richard when he had finished reading, not in the tone he had been using, but in his own natural manner. Again, to quote his wife, when I asked if it wasn’t out of keeping—’ To me it’s the only thing in keeping. The one word that sounds like Richard.’ Now what could have caused that sudden ‘Hell!’ between the confession and the shot? Something absolutely soundless, o
therwise we should hear it on the recording. Something that was annoying but which did not seem very serious to Richard, for it is his normal cheerful word of irritation. I maintain that there is only one possible thing. The light went out. The switch, as I noticed, in the bedside light was a lozenge switch in the cord which would make no sound at all. Someone, therefore, had come to Richard’s room that evening, persuaded him to read a part in which the speaker confessed to the murder of a woman before committing suicide, persuaded him to let this be recorded, and having switched out the light, shot him through the head from below the chin, leaving the thing as a suicide. As simple as that.
“It would not, it seemed, be hard to make this convincing. In spite of his easy-going nature there was something about Richard which no one understood, and it is noteworthy that several of those who knew him best, including Keith and Pippa, told me that although they would not believe he had murdered anyone, they were quite prepared to think he had killed himself, in spite of his cheerful behaviour that day, testified to by Mr Toffin and Miss Hipps, and during the previous week, testified to by almost everyone.
“Someone phoned him at the shop after Mr Toffin had left that afternoon and had a long conversation with him. Miss Hipps, who was of a sentimentally jealous disposition, went in to interrupt it and heard Richard say “Ten o’clock then “, before hanging up. It seems safe to assume that this was the murderer. Soon afterwards Richard asked for the tape-recorder, which he later took up to his flat. He had nothing to do till the Beethoven Trio, which he wanted to hear, came on at 9.15, so he took his car out. He was perhaps about to visit his aunt at Drumbone House when he met Wilma Day and drove her to the station. What time he re-entered we do not know, for the only person who might have seen, Slugley the porter, can’t or won’t tell us. But it is not very important.”
Carolus was interrupted by the headmaster.
“This is extremely interesting,” he said, “and much of it carries conviction. But having made a cross-channel journey by air and slept ill, I am tempted to regale myself with another small drink. Inspector? Whisky. Deene? The same. Er Mrs…. Er Stout. You, Priggley, are doubtless enjoying a lemonade. Beer? Well, perhaps on this occasion. We have all felt our anxieties.”
Bowler spoke sharply.
“I wish you’d come to the point, Mr Deene,” he said.
The headmaster smiled and shook his head.
“I fear there is no hurrying him. I speak from some experience of Deene’s methods, some of it like this unfortunate case of a very anxious and unhappy nature. I have found it useless to attempt to hasten his conclusions.”
“Cheerio, sir,” said Priggley, raising his glass.
“Er cheer-er-rio, Priggley,” responded Mr Gorringer. “Yes, I shall not attempt to hurry you, Deene. At the same time there is a question which I cannot suppress. You have told us that Richard Hoysden was murdered and you have explained how this was done. But you have not yet suggested a motive. I confess I am baffled. What motive could there be for the murder of this very inoffensive man? ”
“There could have been a good many,” said Carolus. “There was in fact a very adequate one. Nobody could so convincingly carry the onus for the murder of a woman. Have you forgotten the rest of the recording? ‘I strangled her’.”
“You mean that the murderer, having committed the crime he intended, added yet another to his charge in order to provide a scapegoat who would distract all suspicion from him? ”
“That was the idea, yes. Otherwise, why all that about having killed a woman? If someone merely wanted to kill Richard and make it look like suicide he would have been satisfied with the recording of a far simpler and more convincing suicide speech. If there was not another murder, in fact, the manner of Richard’s death would be itself suspect. It was an ingenious idea, too, and nearly succeeded. Nobody really doubted when they heard that recording that Richard had killed a woman, in spite of their loyal assurances that it was impossible. If the whole thing had gone as it was planned no one would ever have doubted it. In that case, the woman would have been found before, or at the same time as, Richard; there would have been no suspicion at all, and I should never have heard the recording.”
“Ingenious indeed! “said Mr Gorringer, his protuberant eyes wide open. “The man must be a fiend in human shape.”
“He is a murderer,” said Carolus calmly. “Just once or twice in a generation there is born a natural murderer, a murderer of vocation, and the startling thing is that he is virtually unrecognizable. He is not a schizophrenic—his mind is far from split, on the contrary he might be called single-minded. Sometimes he begins his career quite young, sometimes he waits till he is past middle age, but most often he achieves his masterpieces when he is in the prime of life. In this case we had such a murderer, one who simply was not interested in personal ties, or obligations, in natural human affections or loyalties, who was as cold-blooded as a fish in Arctic waters, cruel, ruthless and utterly resolute, and yet who had the faculty possessed by such murderers of appearing a normal, even an amiable person.
“That is what has made this interesting, in a macabre way. This was no impulsive killing, no crime of passion, not even a murder for greed, as it turned out. Here were the actions of someone whom the psychiatrists would call stark raving mad, and whom I consider to be that rara avis a murderer born, a murderer by natural talent, a murderer who would stop at nothing. It was particularly interesting because fate turned against this murderer and the whole thing lost all recognizable pattern.
“What was accomplished was accomplished with brilliance. All the details of Richard’s ‘suicide’ save that small exclamation ‘Hell!’ went exactly according to plan. The murderer was not seen coming into the building, the tape-recorder had been brought up by Richard and worked perfectly, not a finger-print was left …”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Bowler, “we did not get the tape-recorder till it was too late to find any, but that was one place they must have been. Couldn’t have wiped them off because it was going.”
“True,” said Carolus, “a good example of the danger of suppressing evidence. But the shot was at the right angle, the pistol in the right place, the light was left on and the curtains drawn close. Not an error. As for the rhetorical nature of the confession, that could have been got over at a long stretch. A suicide might, I suppose, have committed it to memory. ‘Hell’ was the only slip and its significance would not have been noticed if the rest of the plan had gone well.”
“You mean,” said Mr Gorringer pompously, “you mean all this was part of a plot to kill the game-keeper’s wife, Florrie Lamplow? ”
Carolus looked at him with sympathy.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It was part of a plot to kill Lady Drumbone.”
1 The reader may derive amusement from doing the same, but only if he doesn’t cheat! A critic recently accused me of being “frantically serious “about the problem set in one of these books. I can’t quite see the point of a who-dun-it unless the thing is laid out as fair and square as a crossword.—L.B.
20
QUICKLY, before there could be ponderous exclamations of surprise or incredulity from Mr Gorringer, Carolus continued:
“The idea was this. Good-natured Richard Hoysden was to read his confession and die somewhere between ten and eleven, then between eleven and twelve the murderer was to go to Lady Drumbone’s flat, of which everyone had keys, remember, and strangle her with the cord of the oyster-coloured curtains in the room called ‘the lounge’. The whole of the confession had been most artfully written to meet the two contingencies. To Richard it would seem a piece of melodramatic rhetoric with no particular application; to anyone hearing it who knew that Lady Drumbone
had been strangled with her own curtain-cord, it would be damaging and conclusive.
“Both of these people could be counted on to be alone, Richard because his wife had left him and his movements were familiar to everyone, Lady Drumbone because of the idyll planne
d by Keith and Wilma Day at Marling Flats. Neither would be discovered till the morning, by which time it would be quite impossible for anyone to say that they had, as it were, died in the wrong order. As you probably know, a great deal of nonsense has been talked about rigor mortis and the time of death, and one reads sometimes of a doctor giving one glance at a corpse and saying ‘yes, died at 5.45 last Tuesday’. Many factors influence any conjecture—for it can scarcely be more than that—but certainly the most any doctor could have said in this case would have been that both had died between, say nine p.m. and one a.m., which was what the murderer wanted. You will not have failed to notice the green carpet at Lady Drumbone’s—’ white on the green ground ‘.
“When I had reached this point I was pretty sure of the murderer’s identity, and I do not propose to go on talking ambiguously about him for long. It would be affectation to continue as though he might be a woman, for I doubt if any woman in this case would have the sheer physical strength to carry out the whole thing, and these were not women’s crimes, anyway. But though Detective Inspector Bowler knows who it is, since he has him under arrest, and although the rest of you will know in a moment if you don’t know already, long custom constrains me to hold back his name till the last moment.
“Richard safely dead, he proceeded to the second part of his plan, and it was now that he met his obstacle, for at Drumbone House Pippa had arrived. Pippa, Lady Drum-bone and Keith sat talking in ‘the lounge’ and it was quite certain that Pippa was staying the night.
“The murderer was now faced with a dangerous predicament. There was the dead body of Richard, and it would only be thought to be suicide if his victim was discovered. If Richard had not killed a woman it would be evident that he had not killed himself either, and before long there would be suspicion of murder culminating in the murderer’s arrest.
“Fortunately for him, in wording the confession so ambiguously that Richard would notice nothing, the murderer had unwittingly given himself scope to deal with the present situation. With what relief he must have thought of Florrie Lamplow, alone in a lonely cottage at a convenient distance from the town yet far enough from her next-door neighbours to be beyond the range of their observation. There was the additional luck, of which he may or may not have been aware, that there had been, as Mrs Tuck had told me, some local talk about Richard and Florrie. If the murderer was aware of this it must have seemed to him to make his case cast-iron. Richard, anxious to return to his wife, had gone out and murdered Florrie then returned and killed himself in remorse. It was not the murder originally planned and it had not the original motive, but as a cover-up for any possible question over Richard’s suicide it could not have been better.
