Death of a Beauty Queen

by E. R. Punshon

  With such converse they passed the time as they went over the house together. It was not a large one. On the top floor were the attics, and above them a space in the roof occupied only by the storage cistern. Access was obtained by a ladder, and Bobby got Mrs Knowles’s consent to put it in position and ascend, when only a glance was needed to tell him no one had been there since the last time a plumber had dozed over the job of putting right a defective ball. The attics consisted of two small ones at the back, and one larger one in front. Of the two small attics, one was a lumber room, full of odds and ends, the other was Mrs Knowles’s bedroom. The front and larger attic was the one Claude Maddox and Leslie had used in past years as a workshop when they were boys together. Bobby paid it particular attention. It still contained the bench at which the youngsters had worked, a supply of wood of various kinds, a tool-box, and so on. Everything was clean and in good order, and Mrs Knowles explained that it was part of the household routine to sweep and tidy the place at regular intervals.

  ‘I did it myself yesterday,’ she remarked. ‘Mrs Harris docs it generally, but I saw to it yesterday.’

  Mrs Harris was, it appeared, a woman who came in to help with the house-work every week-day.

  ‘It needs papering,’ Mrs Knowles remarked, ‘but Mr Irwin says no one uses it now, so it doesn’t matter.’

  Bobby had been looking at the wallpaper, which was in fact a good deal faded, and stained here and there with damp, though it was not those facts that had caught his attention, but the variegated and complicated, and even startling pattern, which he supposed must have represented some very early cubist design. At any rate it seemed a quite mad confusion of lines and angles, without so much as a single curve among them. However, an eccentric wallpaper pattern was evidently of no interest or importance to his quest, and Bobby turned his attention to the windows. A glance showed that they, like those in the other attics, had not been opened for a very long time, for Mrs Knowles held fresh air in some suspicion, associating it with draughts, and draughts with sudden death.

  ‘Open windows lets in the dirt,’ pronounced Mrs Knowles, though it was draughts and death she meant, for experience had taught her the first excuse was more likely to be sympathetically received. ‘The window-man does the outside,’ she explained, ‘and we rub them up inside, and no need to bother opening them.’

  On the first floor were two larger bedrooms in addition to the bathroom, and the smaller room over the front door that Leslie had used for his own, and where so unhappily he had ended his life. On the ground floor were dining- and drawing-rooms, and the smaller room Mr Irwin used as a study. The kitchen and other offices were built out behind, and were reached by a narrow passage continuing from the entrance hall round the foot of the stairs – an arrangement calculated to ensure that food should always be cold before it reached the dining-room. Noticing the attention Bobby was paying to the fastenings of the windows, Mrs Knowles told him she always made sure herself before retiring to bed that all bolts and fastenings were in good order.

  ‘I make sure they’re working proper,’ she told him; ‘well-oiled and all. I put my trust in the Lord, but that’s no reason for leaving windows so any man could open them with a knife. Ours have all got proper screws.’

  Bobby agreed that all fastenings were secure, and that if all windows and doors were as well secured burglary would soon become yet another of Britain’s lost trades. Then he departed, well assured that if Mr Irwin were really planning, as Ferns suggested, to use his £500 as a bait to draw Maddox from his place of concealment, then he must also be planning to provide some special mode of entry.

  It might be, of course, that the plan involved a door or window deliberately left open, and a picture framed itself in Bobby's mind of an open window, of Maddox climbing through to secure the money that would give him his chance of escape, of the old man grimly waiting the coming of his victim.

  But there was, too, Mitchell’s remark to reflect on – that even so the issue might be doubtful.

  ‘Youth on one side, surprise on the other,’ Bobby thought, remembering what Mitchell had said. ‘And which’ll win?

  Probably, however, in spite of the Firearms Act, Mr Irwin had provided himself with a revolver or automatic pistol, and Bobby remembered, too, that to shoot a burglar entering your house might easily pass for an act of self-defence.

  It might well be, Bobby thought, that was what was in contemplation, and he could not help shivering slightly at the possibility, for, though he would scarcely have believed credible a scheme of that nature in the case of the ordinary citizen, he felt in Paul Irwin a strength, motives, standards, beliefs that were the old man’s own.

  ‘He is his own judge,’ Bobby reflected. ‘Or rather, he has made up his mind that only God shall be his judge.’

  From all this, therefore, it followed that he took especial care to see the observation kept upon the house was as careful as complete. One man was to watch the front, one was stationed behind; they were warned that no relaxation of vigilance was to be permitted for even a moment for any reason whatever. Even a blowing of police whistles near by was not to draw them from their post. Any person answering in any way to the description of Maddox was to be challenged instantly, and the most careful notice was to be taken of any unusual noise or occurrence.

  With such precautions taken, and approved by his superiors, Bobby went off duty with a mind at ease, and from his first slumbers he was wakened by the loud ringing of the phone bell at his bedside. He answered it mechanically before he was well awake, but his senses were shaken into full consciousness when he heard the far-off tiny voice directing him to repair at once to Brush Hill.

  ‘There’s been fresh murder done,’ the voice said dispassionately, ‘and the Super, wants you to report to him there at once.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Discovery

  Already when Bobby reached Brush Hill the full routine of investigation was in progress.

  The news, too, had spread in the neighbourhood, in spite of the lateness of the hour, so that a little crowd of curious onlookers had gathered to watch the coming and the going of the detectives, and to be thrilled by the occasional arrival of motors. And, at the windows of the houses adjacent, lights were showing and heads appearing as people roused themselves from their beds to stare at these new happenings.

  Two burly constables in uniform guarded the entrance to the front garden of the house, permitting only those to pass who were engaged in the investigations, or who were connected with the Press, for this sensational sequel to recent events had already reached the newspaper offices, and every crime specialist of Fleet Street was either on the spot by now or hurrying to it at his best speed.

  To one of these guardians of the door, with whom he chanced to have been on duty during his days in uniform, Bobby said, in passing:

  ‘What’s happened? Do you know?’

  But the constable, to whom all this was the mere dull daily grind of duty, signifying only extra work and no more pay, shook his head:

  ‘Someone done someone in,’ he answered vaguely. ‘Stand back, sir, if you please,’ he added, to an enterprising youth who had tried to slip by. ‘Can’t help it if you are a friend of the family – and if you’re Press, show your card.’

  Bobby went on up the path to the house, where now, in the dark night, lights flared at every window. No blinds had been drawn, and behind the windows could be plainly seen the figures of men moving to and fro, intent on their grim business of discovery and pursuit. Another constable was stationed at the door of the house itself, yawning ferociously, for he had been called from bed after a long day’s duty. But he no more than his colleague at the garden gate could tell Bobby exactly what had happened.

  ‘It’s murder,’ he said morosely. ‘A fellow gets no time off – nothing but work, work, work, duty, duty, duty – when there’s murder done.’

  It was a point of view, Bobby thought, as he entered that sad house of tragedy, and in the
hall saw Inspector Penfold, who nodded a greeting:

  ‘Mitchell was asking for you,’ he said.

  ‘I came along as quickly as I could,’ Bobby answered. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Old Mr Irwin done in,’ Penfold answered. ‘Housekeeper did it.’

  ‘Mrs Knowles?’ Bobby repeated incredulously, utterly bewildered. ‘But surely that’s... impossible.’

  ‘Well, there it is,’ retorted Penfold. ‘House was under observation, back and front, by two of my best men, and both of them swear no one has been in or out since Mr Irwin got back from his office. He can’t very well have smashed himself up the way he is, and there’s no one else, not a living soul in the whole place, except Mrs Knowles, with the poker in her hand and blood all over her – and every door and window fastened on the inside so tight the first men here had to break in. So there you are. It was either her, or it wasn’t anyone.’

  ‘But an old woman like that?’ Bobby protested.

  ‘When a woman gets going, even an old woman,’ Penfold said, ‘it’s an all-in job. I remember, when I was a sergeant, having to tackle an old girl of seventy who had just laid hubby out with a flat-iron. Took four of our men to get her to the station, and two of them went on the sick list next day.’

  ‘How was information received?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘She rang up herself. Went off her head after doing it – or before doing it, very like. Yelled something about murder, and help, and come quick, and when we got here – we had to smash in the back door – Mr Irwin was in the study, all knocked about, and so near dead as doesn’t matter, and she was in a faint near the phone. Called us up, and then collapsed. Had the poker she did it with in her hand, and not another living creature in the house, so it was a clear case, every door and window fastened, and my two men on watch outside. So there you are. Sounds impossible, but no getting away from it.’

  ‘But ’ began Bobby, and paused.

  ‘Can’t get away from facts,’ Penfold repeated. ‘If there’s no one else it could be, seeing there’s no one else in the house, then her it must be. Sort out all the impossibles, and what’s left must be the truth. Not that there’s much sorting out required this time. The old boy didn’t do it himself – impossible he could have. There was no one else to do it, except her. Well, it can’t have been no one, so it must have been her, and good enough to hang anybody. And there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Just this. It’s her who did the other cases, too.’

  Bobby didn’t answer. He only stared. With a touch of complacency in his voice, Penfold continued:

  ‘A bit of a staggerer, eh? It was to me, when I tumbled to it. Just think, though. She wasn’t going to have her precious Leslie marrying a Carrie Mears, so she outed the girl to save the boy. I’ve been doing a bit of investigating in my own time, and I’ve got a letter Mrs Knowles wrote to her sister about Mr Leslie mustn’t be let marry the girl, and it would be the ruin of him, and she would stop it herself to save him in both worlds, this and the next one. And then Leslie began to suspect what she had done, and tackled her about it, and let her see what he thought, and she got scared of the hanging she saw getting near and put a bullet in him, knowing no one would ever think of her.’

  ‘But–’ repeated Bobby; and then: ‘Claude Maddox ran for it?’

  ‘Panic,’ explained Penfold. ‘They do at times... silly, and gives us a lot of trouble, same as this time, but it’s just panic. Panic, and their one idea is to bolt for it, anywhere to be safe; and I don’t wonder so much in his case, for it looked bad against him till this came up.’

  ‘But Mrs Knowles wasn’t in the house when Leslie Irwin was shot,’ Bobby objected.

  ‘I know,’ answered Penfold. ‘Alibi, she had all right. Who checked up on it? No one. No one ever even thought of suspecting her, and so they never troubled. House wasn’t properly searched, either. No one thought of looking under beds or in cupboards. Told you I had done a bit of investigating on my own. Supposed to be spending the night with a sick sister, wasn’t she? Well, that night she was out late. Said she got in the wrong train on the tube. That’s as may be, and she may have been lost on the tube, or she may have been hidden here. No one thought of searching here – not what you would call searching.’

  ‘Has a search been made to-night?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘It has,’ Penfold answered. ‘I saw to that. Every room. Under the beds and all – even the cistern in the roof, and every cupboard. Not a mouse could have escaped us. Not a sign of a trace of any living creature anywhere about, and two of my best men to swear it’s impossible for anyone either to have entered or left since it happened. So there you are. When there’s only two people in it, and one’s murdered, then the other did it.’

  ‘Yes, but... but...’ muttered Bobby, a little dazed. He put one hand to his head. ‘That old woman...’ he muttered.

  ‘Ah,’ answered Penfold. ‘Never thought of her, eh? The most unlikely person, you know. Good rule – only we forgot it. The most unlikely person; got to remember that another time,’ he said, with a touch of complacence in his voice.

  ‘Where is she?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Hospital. Ambulance took her off. She was having hysterics when she wasn’t fainting, and fainting when she wasn’t in hysterics. I don’t wonder, either – three murders one on top of another; bit of a nervous strain for an old party like Mrs Knowles.’

  Bobby was still gaping, unable to find words. Penfold gave him a little satisfied nod. The C.I.D. might think a lot of themselves, but sometimes the uniformed branch could show them a thing or two. From one of the adjoining rooms, where till then he had been busy, Mitchell came quickly into the hall. He had, with him a finger-print expert, who was looking very gloomy.

  ‘Nothing to help us so far, sir,’ he was saying. ‘And I don’t think the poker will be any help – it’s smothered in blood. No prints on it we can find to recognize, except those of the woman herself – where she was holding it.’

  ‘Now, I ask you,’ Penfold muttered, ‘how could there be, when there wasn’t another living creature in the house?’

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Mitchell said, noticing Bobby. ‘Stand by till I want you.’

  Bobby waited accordingly, taking while he did so an opportunity to glance within the study. It was not a pleasant sight, for the attack had been delivered with an almost maniacal fury, and, feeling a little sick, Bobby went back to the hall to wait. It was not long before Mitchell returned.

  ‘ Bad business, Owen,’ he said, signing to the young man to join him. ‘What do you think of it? Penfold been telling you?’

  , ‘Yes, sir,’ Bobby answered. ‘Only...’

  ‘Well, there it is,’ Penfold interposed. ’Cut out the impossible, and what remains must be. The house has been gone through from top to bottom, from cellar to attics. Not a sign of another living soul, and Mrs Knowles said herself there was no one here but her and the old man, and couldn’t be. So there you are,’ he repeated.

  ‘We’ll have another look round,’ Mitchell said.

  Penfold shrugged his shoulders, though not till Mitchell had turned away, and put on his most patient smile. Still, the whims of superiors have to be tolerated. They began with the cellars, and soon assured themselves afresh there was no possibility of anyone being hidden there. Then on the ground floor and on the first floor the same careful search was continued, with the same result. Modern drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, bedrooms, offer small chances of concealment, and even modern chimneys offer small facilities for escape or hiding. Examinations proved, too, that, even without the evidence of the police on watch without, any escape by door or window was impossible, since all were securely fastened on the inside.

  They went on to the attics.

  ‘Is there any space under the roof?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘I’ve been up there; had a good look round,’ Penfold answered. ‘There’s dust and dirt enough to show no one’s been there before us for do
nkey’s years.’

  They went into the attic at the back – the one Mrs. Knowles had used for her bedroom – and Penfold said musingly:

  ‘Funny to think of that old creature planning it all here and then creeping out about the job.’

  Mitchell made no comment. There was obviously no possible place of concealment in the room, and once again Mitchell assured himself of the security of the window fastening. Thence they went into the front attic, a large, bare, gaunt apartment, furnished with a few chairs, a table, a work-bench, and two chests of tools.

  ‘Where Claude Maddox and Irwin used to play about, when they were youngsters, I suppose,’ Mitchell remarked. ‘Someone told me they did real good work; young Claude Maddox in especial had a real knack.’ Then he turned his attention to the wallpaper, that somewhat remarkable effort in early cubism which already Bobby had noticed and wondered at. ‘Where on earth did they find it?’ he remarked. ‘Enough to make you dizzy.’

  ‘Picked it up cheap, I expect, sir,’ Penfold suggested, ‘and thought it wouldn’t matter up here.’

  ‘Might be that; might be that; mightn’t be that,’ muttered Mitchell, staring at it with an attention so concentrated and so prolonged that even Bobby wondered why his chief should spend so much time upon what was after all merely an eccentric development of an eccentric and now half-forgotten art theory. Penfold could not prevent himself giving a discreet cough, an even more discreet shuffle of his feet. There was far too much to be done, in his opinion, for time to be wasted in staring at wallpapers. But Mitchell still remained lost in contemplation, as if wallpaper patterns were the one thing in all the world that interested him, as if in comparison with them murders were but trifles; and Penfold said, in a loud whisper, to Bobby:

  ‘Notice how clean and tidy it all is – not a speck of dust anywhere.’

  ‘Mrs Knowles told me it was part of the housework to tidy up here every so often,’ Bobby remarked.