Frequent Hearses

by Edmund Crispin

  “Perhaps,” said Capstick warily, “that actually was her real name.”

  “We’ve no definite proof that it wasn’t,” Humbleby agreed. “But on the other hand, no one so far has admitted to knowing her prior to two years ago, when she turned up as ‘Gloria Scott’ at Menenford.”

  “That’s a paralogism, if you like,” said Fen; and was on the point of explaining why when Capstick, in hungry pursuit of his momentary advantage, forestalled him.

  “But it’s her face you’ve asked people to identify,” said Capstick. “And even if she changed her name, she can’t have changed her face. The fact that no one’s come forward who knew her earlier than two years ago probably means that up to two years ago she just wasn’t in England.”

  “Just so,” said Fen.

  “Ah, yes. Stupid of me,” said Humbleby with aggravating cheerfulness. “I ought to have seen that. So perhaps her real name was Gloria Scott. She may simply have said it wasn’t in order to make an impression by being mysterious.”

  But Fen shook his head. “In that case the destruction in her rooms becomes totally inexplicable.”

  “Oh, yes, so it does,” said Capstick after a moment’s cogitation; and thereupon he retired from the field—though not, he felt, wholly without honour—and reverted to mopping his brow.

  And Humbleby gestured assent. “So getting back to X’s purpose in trying to conceal an at least two-year-old connection with the girl…” He hesitated, considering. “I grant that it wouldn’t be reasonable to look as far back as that for a motive for her suicide—though now I come to think of it”—and here he unexpectedly changed his tack—“I suppose it’s not inconceivable that something or someone cropping up out of her past drove her to it. Blackmail, for instance.”

  “I think, you know,” said Fen, “that we shall probably find the motive for her suicide very much nearer at hand. And if that’s so—if it’s something which concerns Gloria Scott and not Aggie Thistleton, or whatever her real name was—then as far as I can see there’s only one explanation of X’s invading her rooms and doing what he did.”

  “And that is?”

  “Vengeance,” said Fen.

  The word has ordinarily a distinct flavour of melodrama about it; but at its use in this context neither Humbleby nor Capstick felt much inclined to smile. Perhaps this was because the proximity of Maurice Crane’s body, lying covered with a dust-sheet where it had fallen, had a sobering effect even on men professionally inured to death. Apart from it, and from themselves, the room was now empty. The scattered scribbling paper on the table, the loaded ash-trays and the jettisoned scripts of The Unfortunate Lady bore mute witness to the conference which an hour ago had been so catastrophically broken up. The trolley stood loaded with half-empty coffee-cups, their contents cold, grey and unappetising, and other cups had been put down in other places about the room. The hand of the electric clock above the door jolted forward audibly in the silence; beyond the windows the breeze was freshening in the trees, tossing the buds like a juggler’s balls, so that their tender green glistened in the sunlight. And Humbleby, very pensive, said:

  “‘On all the line a sudden vengeance waits...’ Is that what you have in mind?”

  “It was that which first suggested the possibility.”

  “A sudden vengeance waits,” said Capstick bemusedly. “A sudden—” With an effort he pulled himself together. “What are you talking about now?” he demanded.

  They explained what they were talking about and failed to impress him with it.

  “But that’s nothing but a poem,” he said rather indignantly. “Poems haven’t got anything to do with what happens in real life. I tell you frankly, I don’t at all see what you’re getting at.”

  “What I’m getting at is this,” said Fen. “If a man wanted to revenge Gloria Scott’s suicide by killing the people who drove her to it, and if that man was known to be connected with her only under her real identity, then effacing that identity would be a step towards ensuring his own safety. Suppose that you’re her brother, Capstick. She’s run away from home and you haven’t seen her or heard of her for three years. Then one evening, quite accidentally, you meet her somewhere in London. She explains that she is in great trouble and tells you who is responsible. She kills herself, and you, witnessing the suicide or hearing of it, decide to take vengeance. But you know that the police will visit her rooms and will find, pretty certainly, evidence that her name is really Jane Capstick. And that means that as soon as the people who wronged her start dying off, the police are going to start investigating you with some care. But if you can hide the fact that your sister was called Capstick, then you’ve got a much better chance of getting away with your murders undetected, since the police won’t know in what direction to look. So you go to her rooms and obliterate that name from all her belongings. And then you make a start on your victim or victims.”

  “It’s a very fine fantasy,” said Humbleby. “But nothing more than that.”

  “It’s at least a possible hypothesis,” said Fen defensively. “And if Maurice Crane proves to have been poisoned I shall consider it a probable one. He has good qualifications for the role of First Victim, you know, since it’s tolerably certain that he got the girl with child.”

  “Well, I grant you all that, sir.” Capstick’s weak spasm of annoyance was subsiding as the issues became more comprehensible to him. “But the question is, Does your hypothesis justify me in treating this business”—he nodded towards the body on the floor—“as murder, and all these folk we’ve got shut up in the next room as suspects?”

  “There are some things,” said Humbleby, “which you can do without treading on anybody’s toes. For example, you can impound these coffee-cups and have their contents analysed, and you can take a sample of what was—um—egested. Also, you can try to find out which of the cups was Maurice Crane’s, though this room’s in such a muddle that I’m afraid it’ll be difficult.”

  “And what about searching people?” Fen asked.

  Capstick was shocked. “Search them, sir?”

  “Why not? just because they’re in the film industry that doesn’t mean they’re vested with—with Benefit of Clergy or any such privilege.”

  “I doubt if it’d be wise.” Capstick spoke glumly. “They’re influential people with a lot of money, and you have to watch yourself when you’re dealing with that type. As it is, we’ve kept them shut up a sight longer than we ought.” He sighed nostalgically, remembering the comfortable impersonality of parking regulations and one-way streets. “I don’t want to neglect anything, of course, but…”

  He paused and looked appealingly at Humbleby, who to his relief said:

  “Anyway, I can’t imagine that searching them would do much good. If there is a poisoner among them, he’ll obviously be prepared for that. But we must interview them, of course, even if it means keeping them here another half-hour or so. I hope it won’t disrupt half the business of the studios.”

  “This is a Saturday,” said Fen, “and work here stops at mid-day on Saturdays. You may upset their week-ends, but I can’t say the thought of that distresses me very much.”

  Capstick looked again at Humbleby. “Well, would you be prepared to do the talking, Inspector? I know you’ve got questions of your own to ask about the girl, and one way and another,” said Capstick with some pathos, “I should say that for the moment you’re rather more in the picture than I am.”

  “If you want me to, of course I will,” said Humbleby. “You’d better keep quiet, Fen,” he added as an afterthought. “They’ll definitely resent it if you start putting on a Torquemada act, and that might make trouble for the Superintendent.”

  “You seem to have no faith at all in my discretion,” Fen grumbled as he got to his feet, “and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it, I’m sure. If I’m to be gagged, you must ask my question for me.”

  “And that is?”

  “Ask Madge and Nicholas Crane if they know of a
ny reason, other than Maurice’s salacity, why Gloria Scott should have killed herself. They’ll say they don’t, but go on asking just the same.”

  “Have you got information that you’re keeping from me?” said Humbleby suspiciously.

  “No, it’s another premonition.” And Fen nodded affably. “I’m very fertile in premonitions today. Give me time and I’ll dream up the winner of the three-thirty for you… Shall we go?”

  In the adjacent room some restiveness was apparent. Had Leiper been present, the Unfortunate Lady conference would have gone on till one o’clock or later, but this reflection in no way palliated the prevailing sense of injury at being still confined to the studios. In one corner Madge Crane was displaying quiet grief, and but for the fact that her immediate reactions to her brother’s death had not been of quite that order, might have been supposed to have been actually experiencing the emotion. Stuart North, impelled by some obscure sense of duty, was sneezing fitful consolation at her, while Caroline Cecil, as the only other woman present, gravely abetted his efforts. Medesco sat alone, defiantly sketching grottoes, while the young man from the Music Department stared out of the window and whistled the Berenice Minuet through his teeth. Evan George, resolutely though discreetly cheerful, was talking to Nicholas Crane; Jocelyn Stafford prowled up and down, scowling; and Gresson, in an undertone, was regaling the blonde stenographers with what he conceived to be light badinage. They all looked up as Fen, Capstick and Humbleby entered, and Fen at least they eyed with distinct mistrust; it was disconcerting, no doubt, and obscurely suggestive of betrayal, to find an erstwhile collaborator suddenly transferred to the opposite side of the fence.

  Humbleby got down to business without delay.

  “We’re extremely sorry to have kept you so long,” he said ingratiatingly, “and particularly in such distressing circumstances.” He bowed to Madge Crane, who summoned up, in response, an effectively lachrymose little smile. “Our trouble has been that Mr. Crane’s death was so very sudden and unexpected.”

  Medesco grunted. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Humbleby contemplated him with disfavour. “I am a Detective-Inspector from Scotland Yard,” he said. “And I’m here on business which may in some way be linked up with Mr. Crane’s death… Sudden and unexpected, I was saying; and unfortunately the doctor hasn’t been able to give us any information as to what caused it.”

  “So you’re thinking he may have poisoned himself,” said Medesco brusquely, “or that someone did him in.”

  At this, Madge Crane gave vent to a little cry of dismay. Such things need careful practice if they are to come off, and the effect of this essay suggested not so much spiritual anguish as the callous insertion of a pin. Nicholas Crane, sensible, perhaps, that she was a little over-playing the part, frowned slightly and said:

  “Really, Aubrey, I don’t think that’s in the best of taste.”

  “It is not,” said Humbleby—and he uttered the reproof with a gravity so overwhelming that Jocelyn Stafford stopped pacing in order to regard him with a startled and speculative eye; film people are always on the look-out for fresh acting talent, or anyway delude themselves that they are. “We are not,” Humbleby continued mendaciously, “entertaining any such suspicions as those which you—um—adumbrate. But naturally there’s bound to be an inquest, and we’re obliged, therefore, to investigate all possible contingencies, however remote and unlikely they may seem. Now, if I may have your cooperation for a few minutes…”

  They gave it—in a few cases with truculence, but for the most part readily enough. It revealed nothing whatever that was to the purpose. No one could remember where Maurice Crane had put his cup when he had finished with it, and no one, up to the moment of his leaving the room, had observed anything unusual in his behaviour or in anyone else’s.

  “Thank you,” said Humbleby when this parade of nescience was at last over. “And now we come to the matter with which I’m more directly concerned. The matter of Gloria Scott.”

  There was a sudden pregnant hush, in which Madge Crane’s face hardened and she glanced swiftly at her brother. Of all the people there, only Gresson and the young man from the Music Department seemed unaffected by the name. The two stenographers, their poise momentarily in abeyance, looked at one another meaningly. And Stuart North was so surprised that he simply gaped.

  “Gloria Scott?” he said. “What the hell…?”

  “I take it you haven’t seen this morning’s papers, Mr. North.”

  “No, I have not. My eyes are so rheumy I shouldn’t be able to read them.”

  “In the majority of them,” said Humbleby, “there’s a picture of Miss Scott. Some of you others may have seen it.” Madge, Nicholas, Medesco and Jocelyn Stafford all nodded. “The picture has been published thanks to the fact that during the night before last Miss Scott committed suicide.”

  Something like horror appeared in Stuart North’s brown, creased face.

  “M-my God,” he stammered. “You—you can’t m-mean that.”

  “It’s true, I’m afraid.”

  North stared dazedly at the damp handkerchief crumpled in his hand. “That sweet, silly child,” he said vehemently. “It’s incredible… Why, she—”

  And then, recollecting something, he checked himself and looked down at Madge Crane where she sat beside him in grey and olive-green. Everyone there was displaying some degree of astonishment—everyone, that is, except Nicholas Crane, who remained impassive, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his over-elegant sports jacket. To Fen it seemed probable that he was deliberately avoiding his sister’s eye. There was little that Humbleby missed, and he, too, must have observed this, but he made no comment, and his voice was non-committal as he said:

  “We have reason to believe that ‘Gloria Scott’ was merely a stage name. Does anyone know what this girl’s real name was?”

  Silence.

  “Was anyone here acquainted with her before she came to the studios a year ago?”

  Again silence.

  “Can any of you suggest a reason why she should have killed herself?”

  And now there was restless, uneasy movement. Heads were turned, feet shuffled, eye met eye in dumb interrogation. But still no one spoke.

  “It may be,” said Humbleby, “that one of you has an answer to that question, but doesn’t want to blurt it out in public. If that’s so, either the Superintendent”—he indicated Capstick, who was hovering self-consciously at his elbow—“or myself will be available in private after we disperse or at any time.”

  Evan George, small, harassed and untidy, opened his mouth as if to speak and then hurriedly shut it again. There was no other response.

  “Very well,” said Humbleby. “Now, there’s just one other matter… Mr. Crane, I believe you gave a party the evening before last—Thursday evening, that is.”

  Almost imperceptibly Nicholas Crane stiffened. Then, relaxing again, he produced a gold case from an inside pocket, took a flat cigarette from it, and put it with deliberation into the corner of his mouth. His grey eyes were intent beneath heavy lids; his corn-coloured hair, with its displeasing suggestion of an artificial wave at the front, gleamed where the sun caught it; his body, the body of an athlete run to seed, seemed to droop from his shoulders like a coat on a hanger. His left cheek twitched with what could be the beginnings of a tic douleureux, and when, lighting the cigarette, he curled back his full lips, you could glimpse strong, yellow, irregular teeth.

  He inhaled and blew out smoke before replying.

  “Yes,” he said indifferently. “I gave a party all right. What about it?”

  “And Miss Scott was one of the guests?”

  “Certainly.”

  “May I ask, please, why you invited her?”

  Nicholas’s eyes widened. “I liked her,” he said mildly—and there was something about the statement which compelled belief. “She was a nice kid. Unaffected.”

  It occurred to Fen that with persons as important as Nic
holas she would, of course, necessarily be that: only professional inferiors such as Valerie Bryant would see the less prepossessing side of her character. Fen stirred where he stood, and Humbleby, noting the movement and apparently fearing that he was on the point of breaking his vows of silence, hastened to say:

  “And was anyone else here at your party?”

  Nicholas glanced round the room. He took his time about it, though he was not so leisurely as to be uncivil.

  “Madge was,” he said. “And Aubrey—Mr. Medesco. And Mr. Evan George. And Mr. Stuart North. And Miss Caroline Cecil.” He seemed to take an ironic relish in this formal mode of speech. “There were others, too—my brother David, for instance. I can give you a complete list if you need it.”

  “And Mr. Maurice Crane?”

  “He wasn’t able to come.”

  “I see.” Humbleby devoted a moment to ingesting this information. “That seems clear enough… I should like the people who were at that party to remain for just a few minutes longer. The rest, I think, can go, unless—” He turned interrogatively to Capstick, who, caught off-balance, made a hurried, evasive noise in his nose. “Right you are, then. Remember, please, that the Superintendent and myself are at your disposal if you should feel you have anything important to tell us about Miss Scott or Mr. Maurice Crane… Thank you all very much.”

  In an unnatural silence, with downcast gaze and stepping warily, like mourners at a funeral, Gresson, Stafford, the two stenographers and the young man from the Music Department took their departure. As soon as their rearguard had closed the door, a babble of pent-up talk penetrated through it, and presently diminished along the corridor outside.

  Nicholas Crane, who had settled himself on the edge of a table and was swinging an impeccably trousered leg, raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  “Gossip and scandal-mongering,” he said. “We’re going to get a lot of that for the next week or two… Would it be in order, Inspector, for me to ask what my party has to do with this wretched girl’s death?”