Dancing Death

by Christopher Bush

  “Quite . . . thanks.” He waited till they’d gone—Challis, for once, rather subdued—then leaned forward to Crashaw, who was watching him superciliously. Crashaw spoke first.

  “Taking no risks?”

  “No . . . not again! I’ve taken too many in this case already, Crashaw. A woman got strangled because I took risks!”

  “I thought she was stabbed!”

  Travers ignored that. “You spoke about snivelling, just now. Ever been caught before?”

  Crashaw lighted another cigarette, very deliberately.

  “Yes . . . once or twice. It’s all in the game, you know!”

  “Like it much?”

  “Like it! Good God, did I like it!”

  “You’d do a lot to avoid—shall we say—another term?”

  “I would! I’d even commit murder—and you may tell the police so!”

  “Why should I?” Travers shook his head like a father. “I might even commit murder myself. But would you do something else? Would you break your word?”

  Crashaw looked at him queerly. “Why all this . . . hypothetical stuff?”

  Travers shrugged his shoulders. “Just curiosity. . . . Your name isn’t Crashaw, of course!”

  “It certainly isn’t!”

  Travers got up and went over to the light switch. When he came back he was looking amused.

  “Do you know, I’m awfully grateful to you for that information . . . Crashaw? You don’t mind my continuing to call you that? It tells me quite a lot!”

  The other laughed. “Then you’re damned easily satisfied!”

  “I am! Er—would you mind pushing the bell?”

  William, as it happened, came in. The request that he should sit there with an eye on his former prisoner seemed to give him considerable satisfaction.

  “Don’t let him get away this time!” said Travers.

  “Don’t you worry about that, sir!” and he took up a position unpleasantly close.

  Out in the hall George Paradine, Wildernesse, and Challis were waiting, with the front door open. The roar of the tractor sounded pretty close.

  “Soon be here now!” said Paradine. “Get anything out of that chap?”

  “Not much. . . . Martin about?”

  “He just went into the dining room with Charles.”

  Travers looked startled; then turned on his heel. Outside the dining-room door, he ran into the couple just emerging. In the half light it was impossible to see Braishe’s face as he spoke.

  “Oh—er—Travers! Just a moment!”

  He drew him into the room. Travers, with a sudden feeling of irritation, switched on the light.

  “I’ve been trying to get through to town again . . . about Charles.” He broke off to see if the corridor was clear. “I couldn’t get through at all—but I had an idea. I asked him to come in here; then I tried him out. I offered him fifty quid and a permanent job if he would open that safe!”

  Travers’s eyes opened. “And did he?”

  “He couldn’t—or he said he couldn’t! He didn’t know the first thing about it—even when I showed him the safe!”

  “But didn’t Fewne take the siphon?”

  “I know he did. But this chap might have been after a formula. And he might have been surprised down here by Mirabel.” He lowered his voice to the merest whisper. “Why should she necessarily have been murdered in the room where she was found?”

  As Travers opened the door he was shaking his head perplexedly. Then he looked up. “Keep an eye on him till the police get here—and after, if it’s necessary.” He watched Braishe nod and move away, then returned to the breakfast room. Outside the door he stopped. Voices were heard in the hall!

  Inside the room Crashaw sat smoking with a perfect indifference to the presence of the footman.

  “See if Mr. Franklin’s arrived yet, William, and tell him where I am.”

  The footman hurried off. In the door he collided with Franklin himself, whose eyes went straight to Crashaw. Behind him came a figure that warmed Travers’s heart: Wharton, fatherly and suburban as ever, wiping the moisture off his huge moustache with a silk handkerchief.

  “Well, Mr. Travers? And how are you, sir?”

  “Splendid! And damn glad to see you! All right, Franklin?”

  “Rather! Here’s Norris!”

  Wharton got up from the fire where, as if unaware of Crashaw’s presence in the room, he’d been warming his hands. Before Norris could speak he got into action.

  “Now, Mr. Travers. Any men you want specially placed?”

  “Yes. The upstairs room, pagoda, dining room . . . and the attic. Pollock or William can show you.”

  “See to that, Norris, will you? Franklin might show you where. Take this chap along”—he nodded back at Crashaw—“and charge him. Then have him handy!” He stooped to the fire again. “Where’s the best place to start, Mr. Travers?”

  Travers shook his head, then raised his hands hopelessly.

  “God knows! I don’t. . . . Anywhere. . . . Everywhere!”

  Wharton looked at him.

  “Pretty bad, is it? Well, come along to the entrance hall. We’ll have a consultation out there.”

  CHAPTER XV

  WHARTON MAKES A START

  IT WAS Travers’s frantic message to Franklin that led to the appearance of Superintendent Wharton. Of the two available members of the Big Five, Wharton had the advantage of knowing Travers’s little ways—and he’d known Franklin for years. Moreover, Wharton was ideal for that case and its particular setting. He was so quietly paternal in appearance, so disarmingly jovial, so obviously understanding and sympathetic, that he might have been a popular medical practitioner. As to his colossal patience, his tenacious memory, and his occasional outbursts of perfectly terrifying and snarling indignation, these were sides that the unwary never expected. And he was a good mixer. He could be deferential, suave, retiring; even a damn fool, if circumstances demanded it.

  That consultation he had mentioned to Travers took the better part of half an hour; then, in the dining room, which he had chosen as headquarters, began the grilling of Crashaw. Wharton saw Travers’s point. As the keystone of the whole case, Crashaw must be made to talk. If he refused to volunteer information, then he must be made to betray it.

  “I don’t think you’ll scare him,” Travers had said. “He just doesn’t give a damn—and I think he’s got something at the back of his mind that’s cheering him up. I don’t quite know what it is, but it’s there!”

  Wharton’s handling was masterly, as Travers had to admit. He hinted delicately at the withdrawal of the charge; then more than balanced that by hinting at facilities for murder. He got a detailed statement of movements; tried to find a flaw in it by a series of superbly disguised suggestions; sympathized with him; laughed at him; threatened him; then threw his hand in—apparently.

  “All right!” he told the local sergeant. “Take him off to Levington! I shan’t want him to-night—unless I phone.” Then, at the very door, “Oh, Crashaw! How, exactly, did you get out of that room? Pick the lock?”

  “That’s right!” Crashaw nodded jauntily.

  “Where’d you get the wire?”

  “Oh—er—had it on me!”

  Wharton turned to the sergeant. “Show me the list of what was found on him!” He produced a pair of old-fashioned glasses from a disreputable case, adjusted them with extreme deliberation, then peered over the top of them like a burlier Chester Conklin.

  “Hm! What did you do with the wire?”

  “The wire!” He smiled. “Fact of the matter is, I threw it away. Homicidal weapon, you know!”

  Wharton shot a look at him but said nothing. Then he handed back the sheet. “All right! Take him away!”

  He watched the departure, then turned to Travers. “You were quite right! We’ll have the lock in. Fetch it, one of you!”

  The plain-clothes man brought it in, already dismantled. Wharton got his glass to it, then nodded to Franklin to c
ome over. That lock hadn’t a single scratch mark; moreover, as Travers pointed out, since Crashaw must have thought he’d actually succeeded in escaping from the house, there was no need for him to throw away either wire or skeleton keys. He’d have retained them for future use, as he did the key of the outside door of the breakfast room.

  “Ask Mr. Braishe to come here for a minute!” Wharton ordered.

  Travers felt a sudden apprehension, but he needn’t have worried. As it happened, Braishe showed up rather well. There was a sort of board of directors’ air about him. He looked alert, supremely collected; ready to be judicial and prepared to be helpful. Moreover, the visit was not a business one—on Wharton’s side.

  “Sit down a moment, Mr. Braishe, will you? We want you to help us. You see, it’s this burglary affair,” he explained. “We want to get it out of the way. Now, when you went to see Crashaw, I take it he wanted to tell you he was unjustly accused.”

  “Precisely what he did do—or try to do.”

  Wharton smiled. “I imagine he got no change out of you!” Then he frowned. “What we can’t make out is that he claims to have picked the lock. That, of course, is ridiculous!” and he waved a contemptuous hand at the pieces of metal. “Now, I wonder! It’s a thing I’ve done myself, for instance. Could you have thought you turned the key one way but had actually turned it the other?”

  Braishe pursed his lips. “Possible, of course. Mind you, I’d swear I hadn’t.”

  “Naturally. I was merely wondering if you could think back to what you actually did.” He shook his head. “That’s a very difficult thing. However, we’re very much obliged. Everybody perfectly normal? They don’t think we’re going to be a nuisance in any way?”

  Braishe smiled. “I’m sure nobody thinks that! Naturally, they’d all like to get away as soon as they can. Some of them—of us, I might say—have all sorts of important things to attend to.”

  “Quite so! Quite! At the earliest moment, Mr. Braishe!”

  Once more he watched the exit from the room, then leaned over to Travers. “Just wanted to put him at ease! Now, then! What’s your opinion of the Crashaw affair—briefly?”

  “This!” said Travers. “And it’s an opinion and nothing else. Crashaw had a hold of some sort over Braishe and sent for him to show it. Braishe hadn’t any idea of that when he went into the attic—but he soon did! That’s why he ordered the footman to go to the foot of the steps. The hold was so great that Braishe had to let Crashaw go. He pretended to lock the door but didn’t. He advised him which way to take out of the house, and when the place was searched, took that sector himself to report on. But the secret was so deadly that Braishe gave William the revolver, hoping to God Crashaw got shot. Just before you arrived, when I was questioning Crashaw in the breakfast room, Braishe tried to get me out of the room so that he might stay with him. If I’d gone, Crashaw might have got away again—or he might have been shot while attacking Braishe. The only other thing that seems fairly certain is that Crashaw gave Braishe his word that he’d never give him away provided Braishe facilitated the escape—and Crashaw means to keep that word ... unless ...”

  “Unless what?”

  Travers smiled. “I was hoping you’d suggest that! Unless Braishe lets him down—I mean, doesn’t keep his part of the bargain.”

  “Braishe, of course, is screening somebody!” put in Franklin.

  “Well—er—he may be.”

  “You mean he isn’t likely to have had a hand in it himself?” asked Wharton.

  “I very much doubt it.”

  Wharton nodded. “That ought to simplify things. However, ask Dr. Paradine if he can spare us a minute, Franklin, will you?”

  “Do you know, Mr. Travers,” he said, “I feel like a man who’s arrived exceedingly late at the theatre. Something’s going on on the stage, but I haven’t the least idea what. I haven’t got anywhere near this case yet. I’m a stranger; an interloper. House, people, things that happened; everything’s hearsay from you and Franklin. . . . Ah, here’s the doctor!”

  He beamed affectionately on Paradine. “Just the merest second! About that affair out there.” He waved his hand in the wrong direction for the pagoda. “What, between ourselves, are you and Menzies agreeing on? Suicide?”

  “I think so. The gas, of course, as the direct agent.”

  “Quite! That’s all I wanted, thanks. The idea is to eliminate everything outside the house, then we can concentrate on what took place in it. Make your own arrangements, by the way, about P. M’s. and removing the bodies. Menzies’ll show you the ropes.”

  He pottered for a minute or two round the table where lay Travers’s collection of exhibits.

  “And you say finger prints are pretty hopeless?”

  “I think they are,” said Franklin. “The door knob’d have been the great thing, if it hadn’t been smudged. And nobody would have been such a fool as to leave any on the dagger.”

  “Hm!” He thought for a moment. “Well, we’ve got to earn a living some way. We’ll try the dagger. Send those print people in, one of you!”

  Wharton stood by the table as they got to work. Something was evidently happening at the first puff of the insufflator, for he craned his neck round and got out his glass.

  “Take a whole series!” he told Matthews, and the dagger was forthwith fixed and three close-ups taken. Then he beckoned the others over.

  “Take a look at those! Beautiful! Beautiful!” He rubbed his hands. “We’ll get the prints of everybody straightaway!”

  “I think I’ve got most of them here!” said Travers, lugging out his collection of envelopes. “I got them for quite another reason, which I’ll tell you about later.”

  Wharton took a look at them, then at Travers. “What’s inside?”

  “Merely some papers. If you don’t mind, I’ll write the names on them, too, as we open the envelopes.”

  There was a tense silence as the insufflator was puffed and Wharton checked against the dagger. The women’s passed without comment, as did Paradine’s; then Crashaw gave the first surprise. His half sheet had no prints at all!

  “Probably smelt a rat!” said Travers.

  Tommy Wildernesse’s showed two prints—his own and Paradine’s. Next came Braishe’s—and there the test ended. Wharton stared, snatched the paper, and held it alongside the dagger. Then he looked round dramatically. Franklin picked up the glass and had a look.

  “Incredible! Fancy a man being such a fool as that!”

  “Just a moment!” said Wharton. “Are we sure they are his prints! Could he have asked somebody to write this for him?”

  “I doubt it,” said Travers. “Also he wasn’t such a fool as all that. He left the prints on the dagger because he hadn’t gloves on and he was disturbed—”

  “By Crashaw?”

  “Possibly. But he knew he had left the prints. That’s why he tried to get Charles to open the safe!”

  Wharton clicked his tongue. Another one of the things Travers hadn’t had time to tell him!

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “Push that bell for some tea. While we’re eating, you can go over all the things you’ve left out.”

  Twenty minutes later Wharton wiped his mouth, pushed the tray on one side, then got to his feet.

  “Better see Mrs. Fewne first. Her account of the quarrel might give some ideas.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” said Travers, “I don’t think there’s any reliance to be placed on that. If Ransome had been alive we could have had two interviews and noted the discrepancies. Now there’s nobody to check Mrs. Fewne’s story. I don’t suggest for a moment that hers would be wrong! All I mean is, that if hers differs from what Ransome told me, she can maintain—and probably prove—that Ransome was wrong.”

  “What’s your suggestion, then?”

  “A peculiar one.” Wharton sat down again. “I don’t agree that because Fewne died over there he was cut off from other events in the house. I believe the three deat
hs are connected. I believe they’re tangled up as tightly together as the knot in a ball of string. I believe the solution to all three lies in that pagoda!”

  “Hm!” went Wharton. “You ought to know—at least you ought to be well enough steeped in the atmosphere of the place by now. All the same, how do you reconcile your latest statement with your first one—that Crashaw was the key to the case?”

  “So he is—in a different way.” He polished his glasses nervously. “If you’ll bear with me, I’ll try to differentiate. Imagine you’ve a clock, the age of which you don’t know. Then a man turns up and tells you that eighty years ago he helped to make that clock. His is direct evidence. He’s Crashaw—if you could get him to speak. But you might do something else. You might call in an expert who’d deduce the age of your clock by its style, its wood, its works and so on. That’s indirect evidence that’s always there—waiting to be read. That’s Fewne—if we can read what he tells us.”

  Wharton’s comment hit the nail on the head with considerable abruptness.

  “You have no doubt that Fewne was murdered?”

  Travers smiled. “You don’t expect me to tell you that—in the face of medical evidence?”

  Wharton snorted. “Tell me! Every word you say tells me!”

  “Well, that may be so—but it’s not official or repeatable. When I can add motive to event and explanation to suspicion, then I’ll write it down—and sign my name to it!”

  Wharton thought that over. “What are you proposing to do now? Start over there?”

  “Yes—and no. I’d like you, when we do go over there, to be a witness of something that’ll take place. Then I’d like you to take advantage of the evidence of Braishe and the doctors and press for a suicide verdict at the inquest. In other words, I’d like you to let it be known that you’re finished with the pagoda. You’re satisfied. Then let me make use of special points of contact for a day or two, to see if I can find anything out. I’ll keep you informed of all that happens. In the meanwhile it’d be an impertinence for me to say that you’ll naturally carry on where and how you think necessary. Suppose, for instance, you decide to start at the two murders in the house; then, if you come across anything that concerns Fewne—and the pagoda—you’ll pass it over to me. One thing, for instance, you may be told.”