Knock, Murderer, Knock!

by Harriet Rutland

  “If you’re determined on this tomfoolery,” said the Admiral, “I suggest that you have Nurse Hawkins in. She can explain about the position of the wound and all that. She’s a very clever little woman, Winkley, and would be a great help.”

  “By all means,” said Mr. Winkley, and pressed the bell.

  “I agree that Nurse Hawkins is a clever woman,” said Miss Astill, “a little too clever, if the truth were known, perhaps.”

  “What d’you mean by that, ma’am?” the Admiral shot a glance full of hatred at her from under his shaggy eyebrows.

  “I’m firmly convinced that she had a hand in Winnie Marston’s murder,” she said placidly, “and what’s more, I think Inspector Palk agrees with me. After all, she was alone in the baths with the poor girl.”

  “Why, you –” began the Admiral, but Mrs. Dawson interrupted him.

  “You can’t start accusing people like that, Miss Astill,” she said. “There’s no evidence that she had anything at all to do with the murder. If it comes to suspicions, you might as well choose me. I was alone in the treatment-rooms with Winnie, too, and for all that we know you might have been there as well.”

  “That’s all beside the point,” remarked Lady Warme. “It’s not a question of suspicion. You’ve no right to have Nurse Hawkins in here. You know perfectly well that none of the staff is allowed to make use of the public rooms. I’m surprised at you, Admiral, for suggesting such a thing. You’ll only put wrong ideas into the nurse’s head.”

  “I did that a long time ago,” roared Urwin, leaning over and digging delighted fingers into the Colonel’s unwilling ribs.

  While this was going on, Mr. Winkley had sent a message to Nurse Hawkins by the maid who had answered his ring, but when the door opened, it revealed Miss Lewis, the doctor’s secretary, to the Admiral’s evident disappointment.

  “I heard that you were asking for Nurse Hawkins,” she explained, “but she’s off duty and lying down with a headache, and I didn’t like to disturb her unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m off duty myself,” she went on with an apologetic glance at her neat, navy-blue woollen frock, “but if there’s anything I can do...”

  “Sit down, sit down,” bellowed the Admiral, dragging a light chair close to him with the crook of one of his ash-sticks, and patting the seat. “Mr. Winkley’s going to play murder.”

  Miss Lewis gave a perceptible start and put her hand up to her throat.

  “Murder!” she exclaimed, looking apprehensively round the room.

  Mr. Winkley moved towards her.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said soothingly. “I’m only going to try and reconstruct the murder of Miss Blake, and I think you might be able to help me.”

  Miss Lewis looked relieved.

  “But I wasn’t here... I didn’t see...” she said.

  “Just so,” replied Mr. Winkley in his reassuring voice, “but I want you all to help me. Of course, it isn’t serious, you know. I’m not a professional like the Inspector, but I’m extremely interested in crime...In fact, I almost wish there’d be another murder while I’m here.” His hands fluttered. “Oh, please don’t get alarmed. I merely thought it would be fun, you know.”

  “Fun!” snorted the Colonel. “The man’s a lunatic!”

  “Well, if no one has any objection, we’ll begin,” went on Mr. Winkley, blinking rapidly in his excitement. “Miss Lewis, perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking Miss Blake’s place, as you’re the youngest woman here.” He was apparently unaware of the hostile looks which the other three women cast in his direction, and guided Miss Lewis to the high-backed settee. He stood back, frowning, as she sat nervously on the very edge. “The housemaid said that it was quite a long time before she found the corpse.” They shivered at the blatant word. “I can’t understand why she didn’t see it as soon as she came into the room. It’s obvious enough.”

  “I can tell you that,” remarked Miss Astill. “The settee wasn’t in that position. It stood in front of the fire, quite close to the hearth.”

  “Yes, of course, that’s it,” agreed Mr. Winkley, pushing it into that position with Miss Lewis’s help. He walked over to the large bay window and drew back the curtains. “Now if you’ll all come over to the corner of the room,” he said, “we’ll try and think out how the crime was committed.”

  Admiral Urwin began to slide his sticks out from under his chair, then slid them back with a grunt.

  “It’s all a lot of tommy-rot,” he growled, “and I’m not going to come over. It’s too much trouble for me to move, and I don’t suppose I shall be murdered for it!”

  “Now,” said Mr. Winkley eagerly when the others had all joined him, “we can’t see Miss Lewis from here at all, so she would not be able to see the murderer, and the murderer would not be able to see her.”

  “Twice one are two. Here endeth the first lesson,” mocked the Colonel, losing his temper again. “What the devil is the fool getting at? What’s the good of trying to reconstruct a crime when the criminal is already in gaol? I’ll be damned if I’ll –”

  “I wonder if I’ve forgotten anything,” said Mr. Winkley tremulously, taking no notice of him.

  “Shouldn’t you put the lights out?” asked Lady Warme, quite forgetting her earlier decision to have nothing to do with the affair.

  Mr. Winkley hesitated.

  “The lights,” he said slowly. “The lights. Oh yes, certainly, the lights.”

  Mrs. Dawson tapped her temple significantly with her forefinger, and laughed.

  Mr. Winkley walked over to the switches and turned out all the lights in the room.

  “Mr. Winkley,” came Miss Lewis’s voice from the settee, “I don’t think I can –”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Mr. Winkley. “You’re quite safe, and you’ve no idea how much you’re helping me.” He returned to the window. “Now I want you to concentrate on the crime,” he said in a voice full of importance. “The room is dark, the victim is sitting on the settee; all is ready for the murderer.”

  A choked, hysterical noise came from one of the women.

  “For God’s sake, Winkley,” came the Colonel’s voice from the darkness, “stop all this nonsense!”

  “Hush,” said Mr. Winkley. “Listen.”

  The room remained silent.

  “What do you think happens next?” asked Mr. Winkley, as indefatigable as a good hound on a clear trail.

  “I should think the door opens,” suggested Mrs. Dawson facetiously, then stifled a scream as the knob turned.

  There was no need now to tell them all to keep quiet. Each one of them could hear the beat of his own heart. The door opened slowly, paused, then as slowly closed. But now there was someone inside it. The little group of people in the window stood as if turned to stone. Then the silence was broken by the clatter of sticks and a shout from the Admiral. Mr. Winkley leaped to the light switch and gazed in astonishment at the scene which was not of his staging.

  At the side of the settee nearest the door stood Mrs. Napier, holding something which glittered like a steel arrow in her uplifted hand. Stumbling towards her was Admiral Urwin. Even as he reached her, she moved her hand, and as the steel streaked downwards, the body of Miss Lewis rolled off the settee on to the floor.

  Mrs. Napier shook out the large silk handkerchief which had been wrapped round the knitting-needle, and began dusting down the wide skirt of her flowered silk dress. Little beads of moisture glistened on her forehead and upper lip, and her eyes were very bright behind the thick-lensed spectacles.

  “She is dead,” she said in pleased tones. “I killed her. The others too. They will never be cruel to me again. You can tell Inspector Palk.”

  Chapter 31

  “I don’t like it,” said Palk.

  He was sitting in the small room which the doctor had placed at his disposal ever since the unsolved murder of Winnie Marston, and which the Inspector used periodically when he visited the Hydro, “like the visiting music master to a girl
s’ school,” as he remarked bitterly. He had just interviewed seven of the people who had been present in the drawing-room on the previous evening during Mr. Winkley’s reconstruction of the first crime, and had been treated to an exhibition of varied emotions which the pupils of a school of dramatic art could not have bettered. Admiral Urwin had been blustering, Mrs. Dawson over-cheerful, Colonel Simcox indignant, Miss Astill protesting, Miss Lewis hysterical, and Lady Warme had washed her hands of the whole affair with biblical thoroughness. Worst of all, there had been Mrs. Napier, ogling and mouthing, and insisting that she had always said she was the murderer and now perhaps they would all believe her; in spite of the fact that Miss Lewis remained very much alive.

  “I don’t like it,” repeated Palk as Sergeant Jago made an indistinct noise apparently indicative of sympathy. “As if things weren’t bad enough before, with Winnie Marston’s murderer still free, without this half-baked amateur sleuth running about and upsetting everybody! What in the name of heaven did he want to reconstruct a solved crime for? It makes you think that he wanted to see who would go crazy first. Well, now he knows: Mrs. Napier. I shall have to take up residence in the Hydro if this sort of thing is going to continue. If I leave it for a week this is what happens. I expressly told the doctor that it was against my wishes for him to take in any more guests till these murders were cleared up.”

  “Aren’t you talking a bit as if there’d been another murder, sir?” asked Jago apologetically. “After all, Miss Lewis only fainted. I bet it gave them all a fright when she rolled off the settee like that.” A delighted grin began to deepen on his face, but was immediately suppressed at the sight of his superior’s scowl. “Do you think Mrs. Napier really intended to kill Miss Lewis, sir?”

  “No,” replied Palk shortly.

  “I’ve always rather fancied Mrs. Napier as the murderer myself,” went on Jago. “She’s very cunning, and Nurse Hawkins always suspected her, if you remember.”

  “She never said so,” said Palk. “All that she said was that if she had to name someone as a possible suspect, she’d name Mrs. Napier. That’s quite a different thing. No, Mrs. Napier was only imitating the murder last night. I suppose all this talk of reconstruction got on her nerves.”

  “But she wasn’t in the drawing-room when they were talking about it, according to the others.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean a thing in a place like this. The maid probably told her when she went to fetch Nurse Hawkins.”

  “She did have a steel knitting-needle in her hand, sir,” persisted Jago.

  “And stuck it into the arm of the settee for about an inch,” retorted the Inspector.

  “Where did she find the needle, though? I thought we had confiscated the lot.”

  “Well, you didn’t. Mrs. Napier said that she’d found it in Miss Brendon’s room, but she might as well have said Mrs. Dawson’s room or anyone else’s, for all the use it is to us. It’s not a bit of good trying to get information out of Mrs. Napier. She just says the first thing that comes into her head.”

  “But, sir, couldn’t she –?”

  Palk turned on the sergeant savagely.

  “No, she couldn’t. Haven’t you any brains in your head at all, Sergeant? The handle, man, where was the handle? No one could get a grip on a plain steel needle unless it was fitted with a handle. Mrs. Napier was just showing off. I don’t believe she’d hurt a fly.”

  The sergeant rubbed his chin reflectively.

  “You don’t think there was any chance of her killing the Marston girl, then, sir?” he asked tentatively.

  “No, I don’t,” snapped Palk.

  “She was in the baths, sir.”

  “So was the nurse. So was Mrs. Dawson. So was Ted Cox, and God knows who else besides,” replied the Inspector. “If it was anyone, it was Mrs. Dawson: she’s cool enough for anything, and there’s plenty of suspicion attached to her. Look at all those notes she made about Miss Blake’s murder. She was a V.A.D. during the end of the war, too, and knows enough about anatomy to have stabbed her with the needle, but then” – he broke off abruptly – “so do they all, as far as I can make out. Besides, after the first murder, anyone in the place would know how to do it. I still think it was the chauffeur.”

  “That’s enough to show that he’s innocent, then,” said Sergeant Jago, without thinking.

  Palk’s heavy fist crashed on to the table in front of him.

  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he demanded.

  Sergeant Jago blushed so deeply that the colour was perceptible even beneath his naturally highly coloured cheeks.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make any reflection on you. I was only thinking of the usual detective novel. The chief suspect always turns out to be innocent, sir.”

  Palk snorted.

  “Haven’t I enough to do, with a crazy fellow like Winkley making ridiculous speculations about the case, without you talking like your favourite Sexton Blake? Bring that amateur sleuth in here; I want to talk to him.”

  Sergeant Jago, looking deeply offended at this slur on his reading, for he belonged to a well-known subscription library, and prided himself on borrowing “A” books on a “B” ticket, went out to fetch Mr. Winkley.

  The sight of his lean shoulders and peering eyes annoyed Palk more than ever, and without preliminaries he asked why he had come to the Hydro.

  Mr. Winkley blinked rapidly and began to stammer, as if overawed at the idea of being in the presence of a real detective.

  “Well... I... I...” he began. “I had to take a holiday and I wanted to go somewhere new. There was an advertisement in a paper that looked rather attractive, I thought... I believe I’ve still got it in my pocket.”

  He pulled out a little notebook, which Palk noticed was full of scribbled notes, and extracted a newspaper cutting which he handed over to the Inspector. It showed a representation of Presteignton Hydro set imposingly on the very edge of a deep precipice, and apparently half blotted out by a blizzard. Underneath was written:

  Regain your lost health at Presteignton Private Hydro.

  Well-equipped treatment-rooms. Resident Doctor.

  Peaceful surroundings. Private bathing-beach. Tennis.

  Croquet. Special residential terms.

  “Very attractive, if you like that kind of place,” remarked the Inspector, “though ‘peaceful surroundings’ isn’t so good for the scene of two murders. At least,” he added, looking first at the persistent rain beating dismally against the window, and then at the photograph, “you have no cause to complain that you were not warned against the weather. They’ve distinctly indicated the rain in the picture.” The fancy amused him, and he continued in more pleasant tones, “You seem to have upset the Hydro pretty thoroughly since you arrived. Whatever induced you to try and reconstruct the murder of Miss Blake?”

  “I was interested,” blinked Mr. Winkley. “You see crime’s a little hobby of mine. I’d been talking with the others here about the two murders, and they seemed so much alike that I can’t help thinking that they must have been committed by the same hand. I thought I might find some clue that had been overlooked by the police, because the reconstruction of the crime would make them all think about it more clearly, and it might bring to light something which no one had remembered to tell you when you were questioning them.”

  “You wouldn’t be so interested in crime if it was your job,” said Palk. “You’d soon get tired of routine work and report-writing. Being a detective doesn’t mean going about picking up cigarette-ends all the time and making brilliant guesses. Now perhaps you’ll give me an account of your detective-work last night.”

  Mr. Winkley complied eagerly, and his account agreed in all details with those which Palk had already heard from the others.

  “Did you arrange for Mrs. Napier to enter the room after the lights were put out?” asked the Inspector.

  “Oh no,” replied Mr. Winkley. “It was quite a surprise to me.�
��

  “Was it part of your plan, then, for Miss Lewis to roll off the settee?”

  “No, no!” protested Mr. Winkley. “It was a genuine faint. I sent for Dr. Williams immediately, and he said it was genuine.”

  “Yes, I know,” replied Palk, “but the doctor might be – er – let us say, an interested party. You say that you remained by the switch after you had put on the lights. Didn’t you think that another murder had taken place before your eyes, and think of catching the culprit?”

  “No,” fluttered Mr. Winkley. “I knew Miss Lewis had only fainted.”

  “Oh,” smiled Palk. “You knew. That was very clever of you. If you hadn’t already arranged for Miss Lewis to roll off the settee at a given signal from you, how could you know that she’d only fainted? You saw the steel knitting-needle in Mrs. Napier’s hand, didn’t you? And you knew that two other people had already been murdered with a steel knitting-needle, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” said Mr. Winkley earnestly, “but Mrs. Napier obviously couldn’t have done any damage. She just jabbed the needle into the arm of the settee.”

  “But there might have been an accident even if Mrs. Napier had not intended to kill Miss Lewis. She might have become flustered by the Admiral’s shout. Why didn’t you run towards her as everyone else did?”

  “Well, you see,” said Mr. Winkley, blinking less than usual, “I knew that she could do no damage because she had no grip on the needle. She had only wrapped a silk handkerchief round it, which would be worse than useless. The real murderer had some kind of handle.”

  Palk’s smile faded and he looked suspiciously at Mr. Winkley, who seemed to think that perhaps he had said too much, and added, “Of course, that’s only what I think.”

  “By the way,” said Palk after a short pause, ‘you say you’re on holiday. What is your job, Mr. Winkley?’’

  Mr. Winkley hesitated before replying.

  “I suppose you’d call me a... sort of a free-lance,’’ he admitted.