The Mad Hatter Mystery dgf-2

by John Dickson Carr

  `When he arrived there he again told the driver to wait. He said he wanted to pack a bag and then to go to an address at Golders Green. At this the driver protested volubly. He'd been waiting over three hours, there was a big bill on the meter, and he hadn't seen the colour of his fare's money: besides, Golders Green was a; long distance out, Then Arbor shoved-a five-pound note into his hand, and said he could have another if he would do as he was told.

  `Naturally, the taxi-driver began to suspect something fishy. During all the time he spent hanging about the Middle Tower, the warder had let slip a few hints about the real state of affairs. Arbor wasn't in the house long before he came out carrying a valise and a couple of coats over his arm. On the drive to Golders Green the driver grew decidedly uneasy.'

  Hadley paused, and turned over a sheet of paper from his brief-case as though to refresh his memory.

  Did you ever notice how even the most reticent people will speak freely to taxi-drivers? I don't know why it is, unless it's because a taxi-driver is never surprised at anything. Now, but for what this driver knew of the murder, and Arbor's rather remarkable mumblings in the cab, I shouldn't have heard this at all. But the taxi-driver was afraid he'd be mixed up in a murder. So after he drove

  Arbor to Golders Green, he came straight back and went to Scotland Yard. Like most Cockneys, he had a flair for description and vivid pantomime. He perched on the edge of a chair in my office, turning his cap round in his hands and imitating Arbor to the life.

  `First Arbor asked him whether he carried a revolver.

  The, taxi-driver said "No!" and laughed, Then Arbor wondered whether they were being followed; he began talking about how he wasn't in the directory at all, and he had a cottage at Golders Green which nobody knew about except some friends near by. But what the driver especially remembered was his constant reference, to a "voice" ‘

  'A voice?' Doctor Fell repeated.' `Whose voice?'

  'Arbor didn't say. But he asked whether telephone calls could be traced that was the only point he definitely mentioned in connexion with it. Well, they reached the cottage, in an outlying district. But Arbor said he wouldn't go in just at the moment the place hadn't been opened for months. He had the driver drop him at a villa not far away, which was well lighted. The driver noted the name. It was called `Briarbrae".'

  `The friends of his, I suppose. H'm.!

  'Yes. We looked it up later. It belongs to a Mr Daniel Spengler. What do you make of it?'

  'It looks bad, Hadley. This man may be in very grave danger.'

  'I don't need you to tell: me that,' the chief inspector said, irritably. 'If the damned fools would only come to us when they get into trouble! But they won't. And if he is in any danger, he took the worst possible course. Instead of going, to a hotel, as he said he intended, he thought he was choosing a spot where nobody could find him. And instead' he picked a place ideally suited for — well, murder:

  'What have you done?'

  'I sent a man immediately to watch the house, and to phone the Yard every half-hour. But what danger is he in? Do you think he knows something about the murder, and the murderer knows he knows?'

  For a moment Dr Fell puffed furiously at his cigar.

  `This is getting much too serious, Hadley. Much. You see, I've been basing everything on a belief that I knew how all this came about. I told you this afternoon that everybody liked playing the master-mind. And I could afford to chuckle, because so much of it is really funny… '

  `Funny'

  'Yes. Ironically, impossibly funny. It's like a farce comedy suddenly gone mad. Do you remember Mark Twain's description of his experiences in learning to ride a bicycle? He said he was always doing exactly what he didn't want to do. He tried to keep from running over rocks and being thrown. But if he rode down a street. two hundreds yards wide, and there, happened to be one small piece of brick lying anywhere in the road, inevitably he would run over it. Well, that has a very deadly application to this case.

  `I've got to separate the nonsense and the happenings of pure chance from the really ugly angle of the business. Chance started it, and murder only finished it; that's what I think. I must show you the absurd part of it, and then you can judge whether I'm right. But first there are two things to be done.'

  `What?'

  `Can you communicate with that man you have on guard at Arbor's cottage?' the doctor asked, abruptly.

  `Yes. Through the local police station.'

  'Get in touch with him. Tell him, far from keeping in the background, to make himself as conspicuous as possible. But under no circumstances — even if he is hailed to go near Arbor or make himself known to Arbor.'

  `What's the purpose of that?'

  `I don't believe Arbor's in any danger. But obviously he thinks he is. He also thinks the police haven't any idea where he is. You see, there's something that man knows, which for one reason or another he wouldn't tell us. If he notices your man lurking about his cottage, he'll jump to the conclusion that it's his enemy. 'If he tries calling the local police, they will find nobody — naturally. It's rather rough on him, but we've got to terrify him into telling what he knows. Sooner or later he'll seek your protection, and by that time we shall be able to get the truth.'

  `That,' said the chief inspector, grimly, `is the only good suggestion you've made so far. I'll do it'

  'It can't do any harm. If he is, in danger, the obvious presence of a guard will have a salutary effect on the enemy. If he does call the local police and there's a real enemy about, the police can have a look for the real enemy while they pass up your own man… The next thing, we've got to pay a very brief visit to Driscoll's flat.

  `If you're thinking something is hidden there, I can tell you that my men will find it more easily than we can ever'

  `No. Your men will attach no importance to what I want to find. I don't suppose they bothered to look at his typewriter, did they? Also, I want a brief look about the kitchen. If he has one, as I'm sure he has, we shall probably find it stowed away in the kitchen….'

  The mist was clearing as they emerged from the restaurant. The theatre traffic had just begun to thin in the glare of Shaftesbury Avenue, and Hadley had some difficulty in manoeuvring his car. But, once out of the centre of town and across Oxford Street, he accelerated the big Daimler to a fast pace. Bloomsbury lay deserted under high and mournful gaslamps. They cut across into Great Russell Street, and turned left past the long shadows of the British Museum….

  Tavistock Square was large and oblong in shape, not too well supplied with street lights. Along the west side the buildings were higher than on the others, and rather more imposing in a heavy. Georgian style. Tavistock Chambers proved to be a red-brick block of flats with four entry halls, two on either side of an arch beneath which a driveway led into the court. Into this court Hadley drove the car.

  `So this,' he said, `is the way the woman escaped. I don't wonder she wasn't noticed.'

  He slid from under the wheel and peered about. There was only one lamp in the court, but the mist was rapidly lifting into a clear, cold night.

  `Lower parts of the windows frosted glass,' the chief inspector grunted. `I left instructions to question the tenants about her, but it's useless. A Red Indian in his war bonnet could have walked out of here without being seen. Let's see…. Those are the glass doors giving on the rear of the entry halls. We want the third- entry. There it is. That'll be Driscoll's flat, with the light in the rear window. Evidently my man hasn't left the place yet.'

  He crossed to the glass door, stumbled over a rubbish can, and disturbed a hysterical cat. The others followed him up some steps into a red-tiled hall with brown distempered walls. Its only illumination was a sickly electric bulb in the cage of the automatic lift.' But a thin line of light slanted out from the door on their left, which was not quite closed, and they saw the splintered wood about the lock.

  Flat 2. Rampole's eyes moved to the door facing it across the hall, where the watchful Mrs Larkin might be peerin
g out from the flap of the letter-slot.

  There was a crash, sudden and violent. The line of light in the doorway of Flat 2 seemed to shake, and the noise echoed hollowly up the lift-well. It had come from that door….

  While the echoes were still trembling, Hadley moved swiftly across to the door and pushed it open. Rampole, peering over his shoulder, saw the disorder of Philip Driscoll's sitting-room as it had been described a short time ago, But there was another piece of disorder now.

  In the wall directly opposite was a mantelpiece with an ornate mirror behind the shelf. And in front of this mantel piece, his back to the new-comers, a tall and heavy man stood with his head bowed., They saw past his shoulder a foolish plaster figurine standing on the mantelshelf; a woman painted in bright colours, with,a tight-waisted dress and a silver hair-net, But there was no companion figure beside it. The hearthstone was littered with a. thousand white fragments to show where the other figure had been flung down a moment before.

  Just for a moment the tableau held — weird and somehow terrible in its power. The echo of that crash seemed to linger; its passion still quivered in the bent back of the man standing there.

  Then his hand moved out slowly, and seized the other figure. And as he raised it his head lifted and they saw his face in the mirror.

  `Good evening,' said, Dr Fell. `You're Mr Lester Bitton, aren't you?'

  11. The Little Plaster Dolls

  Never before that time, Rampole afterwards thought, had he ever seen a man's naked face. Never had he seen it as for a brief instant he saw Lester Bitton's face in the mirror. At all times in life there are masks and guards, and in the brain a tiny bell gives warning. But here was a man caught blind in his anguish.

  He looked a little like his brother, though his face was inclined to be reddish and have heavy folds. But you could not tell now.

  The lost, damned eyes stared back at them from the mirror. His wrist wobbled, and the figure almost slid through his fingers. He took it with his other hand and put it back up on the mantelpiece..

  `Who the hell,' said Lester Bitton, `are you?'

  His deep voice was hoarse, and it cracked. That almost finished him, but he fought his nerves. `What God damned right have you got to walk in… '

  `Steady,' said Hadley, quietly. `I'm afraid it's you who have to make an explanation. This flat has been taken over by the police, you know. And I'm afraid we can't respect private feelings in a murder case. You are Lester Bitton, aren't you?'

  The man's heavy breathing quieted somewhat, and the wrath died out of his eyes.

  `I am,' he said in a lower voice. `Who are you?' 'My name is Hadley

  'Ah,' said the other, 'I see.' He was groping backwards, and he found the edge of, a heavy leather chair. Slowly he lowered himself until he was sitting on the arm. Then he made, a gesture. `Well, here I am.'

  `What are you doing here, Mr Bitton?'

  'I suppose you don't know?' Bitton asked, bitterly. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the smashed figure on the hearthstone.

  The chief inspector played his advantage. He studied Bitton without threat and almost without interest. Slowly he opened his brief-case, drew out a typewritten sheet — which was only Constable Somers' report, as Rampole saw — and glanced at it.

  `We know, of course, that you have employed a firm of private detectives to watch your wife. And — he glanced at the sheet again- `that one of their operatives, a Mrs. Larkin, lives directly across the hall from here.'

  `Rather smart, you Scotland Yard men,'' the other observed in an impersonal voice. `Well, that's right. Nothing illegal in that, I suppose. You also know, then, that I don't need to waste my money any longer.'

  `We know that Mr Driscoll is dead.'

  Bitton nodded. His heavy, reddish, rather thickly-lined face was assuming normal appearance.

  `Yes,' he said, reflectively. `The swine's dead. I heard it when I went home to dinner. But I'm afraid it hasn't cut my detective agency off from much money. I was intending to pay them off and get rid of them to-morrow. Business conditions being what they are, I couldn't afford an unnecessary expense.!’

  'That, Mr Bitton, is open to two meanings. Which of them do you imply?'

  'Let's be frank, Mr…. er… Hadley. I have played the fool. You know I was having my wife followed. I owe her a profound apology. What I have discovered only does credit to her name.'

  Hadley's face wore a faint smile.

  'Mr Bitton,' he said, 'I had intended having a conversation with you tonight, and this is as good a place as any. I shall have to ask you a number of questions.

  `As you wish'

  Hadley looked round at his companions. Dr Fell was running his eyes over the small, pleasant room, with its dull, brown-papered walls, sporting prints, and leather chairs. One of the chairs had been knocked over. The drawer of a side-table had been thrown, upside down on the floor, its contents scattered. Dr Fell stumped across and peered down.

  `Theatre programmes,' he said, `magazines, old invitations, bills…. H'm. 'Nothing I want here. The desk and the, typewriter will be in the other rooms somewhere. Excuse me. Carry on with the questioning'

  He disappeared through a door at the rear.

  Hadley removed his bowler, gestured Rampole to a chair, and sat down himself.

  `Mr Bitton,' he said, harshly, `I suggest that you be frank. I am not concerned with your wife's morals, or with yours, except in so far as they concern a particularly brutal murder. You have admitted you had her followed. Why do you trouble to deny that there was an affair between your wife and Philip Driscoll?'

  `That's a damned lie. If you insinuate.’

  `I don't insinuate. I tell you. You can hardly be very excited by an insinuation which you made, yourself when you put a private detective on her movements can you? Let's not waste time. You have the "Mary" notes, Mr Bitton.'

  'Mary? Who the devil is Mary?'

  `You should know. You were about to smash her on the hearth when we walked into this room'

  Hadley bent forward; he spoke sharply and coldly: 'I warn you again, I can't afford to waste time. You are not in the habit of walking into people's houses and, smashing ornaments off their mantelshelves because you don't approve of the decoration. If you have any idea that we don't know the meaning of those two figures, get rid of it. We do. You had broken the man, and you were about to break the woman. No sane person who saw your face at that moment could, have any doubt of your state of mind.'

  Bitton shaded his eyes with a big hand. 'Is it any of your business.' he said at length, 'whether..'

  `Have you heard the facts of Driscoll's murder?'

  `A few. I spoke to my brother when he returned from the Tower. Laura had come home and locked, herself in her room. When I — when I came back from the City, I knocked at her door and she wouldn't let me in. I thought everybody, had gone mad: Especially as I knew nothing of this murder. And Sheila said that Laura had run into the house as white as death and rushed upstairs without a word. Then Will

  came in about seven-thirty and told me a little…. `Are you aware that an excellent case could be made out against your wife for the murder of Driscoll?'

  Hadley was in action now. Rampole stared at him; a placid merchant ship suddenly running out the masked batteries. Hitherto, the American knew, he had lacked proof of his most, vital point, and Bitton had supplied it., He sat grey and inexorable, his fingers interlocked, his eyes burning.

  `Just a moment, Mr Bitton. Don't say anything. I'll give you no theories. I simply intend to tell you facts.

  `Your wife was having an affair with Philip Driscoll. She wrote a note telling him to meet her to-day at one-thirty at the Tower of London. We know that he received this note, because it was found in his pocket. The note informed' him that they were being watched. Driscoll lived off the bounty of a quick-tempered and far from indulgent uncle. I, will not say that if the uncle ever discovered any such scandal he would disinherit his nephew — because even that obvious point is a the
ory. I will not say that Driscoll saw the vital necessity for breaking off his liaison — because that obvious point is a theory, too.

  'But he did telephone Robert Dalrye to get him out of a mess, just after he received that letter. And, later, someone did speak to Dalrye on the telephone, in a high voice, and lured him away on a wild-goose chase to this flat. You need not consider the following inferences, because they are theories: (i) That Driscoll always ran to Dalrye when he was in trouble, 2)That all Driscoll's family knew this, (3) That Dalrye's level-headedness would have caused the impressionable Driscoll to break off such a dangerous entanglement, (4) That Driscoll was in a mood to break it off, because he had not seen his paramour for several weeks and he was a youth of roving fancy, (5) That this paramour felt convinced she could keep him in line if she saw him once again alone, without the interference of a cool-headed third party, (6) That Driscoll's paramour knew of this morning telephone call through Sheila Bitton, who had also spoken with Dalrye on the phone that morning, (7) That the voice of Driscoll's paramour is, for a woman, fairly deep, and, finally (8) That a voice on the telephone speaking quickly, chaotically, and almost unintelligibly, can pass without detection for the tones of almost anyone the speaker may choose.'

  Hadley was quite unemotional. He spaced his words as though he were reading a document, and his interlocked fingers seemed to beat time to them.

  `I have told you these were inferences. Now for more facts,' the chief inspector continued.. `The appointment in the note had been for one-thirty. One-thirty is the last time Driscoll was seen alive. He was standing near the Traitors' Gate, and some person approached out of the shadows and touched his arm. At precisely twenty-five minutes to two, a woman answering to the description of your wife was seen hurrying away from the vicinity of the Traitors' Gate. She was hurrying so blindly, in fact, that she bumped squarely into the witness who saw her in a roadway no wider than this room. Finally, when Driscoll's body was found on the steps of the Traitors' Gate, he was discovered to have been stabbed with a weapon which your wife purchased last year in southern France, and which was ready to her hand in her own home.