Death in the Dentist’s Chair: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  Sir Richard Pomfrey was in the act of settling himself into his overcoat before picking up his hat and gloves from the table. Perhaps Constantine’s perceptions were abnormally acute, but it seemed to him that there was a touch of apprehension in his hasty turn towards the opening door. Mrs. Vallon was standing by the mantelpiece, staring down into the fire. She looked up as Constantine entered.

  “Hullo,” was Sir Richard’s greeting. “I’m off. Mrs. Vallon has just been accusing you of pinching her appointment!”

  Constantine, watching him closely, came to the conclusion that he had been mistaken. Sir Richard’s blue eyes were as frank and carefree as usual and it was difficult to believe that he had any premonition of the news that the old man had determined to be the first to impart. He realised suddenly that if he intended to forestall the police it behooved him to get on with his job.

  “I’m afraid Mrs. Vallon’s appointment is postponed for the present,” he said soberly, his eyes on Sir Richard’s face. But he learned nothing there.

  “Why? What’s the matter with Davenport?” was his only comment.

  Briefly, and with due regard to Mrs. Vallon’s nerves, Constantine broke the news that Mrs. Miller was dead.

  Sir Richard stared at him.

  “Dead? Did she die under gas, or what? Poor old Davenport must be in a state!”

  “I’m afraid it wasn’t gas,” said Constantine deliberately. “It looks like murder. The police are in the house now.”

  A gasp from Mrs. Vallon made him turn. At the sight of her face he hurried towards her, but Sir Richard forestalled him. His arm round her waist, he drew her gently towards a chair.

  “It’s all right,” Constantine heard him murmur, as she sank into it.

  She looked up at him and, as she did so, the colour slowly flooded back into her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, with a valiant effort at self-control. Then her eyes met Constantine’s.

  “But I don’t see ...” she continued. She paused to collect her thoughts. “Was that the woman who went out as we came in?” she asked.

  Sir Richard nodded.

  “Davenport’s man came for her,” he agreed. “I say, we must have been sitting here, just next door, when it happened. Pretty gruesome, what?”

  Again that flickering doubt crossed Constantine’s mind. Sir Richard’s tone was sympathetic, but that was all. He showed none of the horrified pity that might be expected from one who, as Constantine knew, had once been at least an acquaintance of the dead woman.

  Mrs. Vallon covered her eyes for a moment with her hand.

  “How horrible,” she whispered. “But how could she have been killed? Mr. Davenport was with her, surely? It wasn’t. ...”

  Constantine shook his head.

  “It wasn’t Davenport,” he assured her. “He was downstairs in his work room. That’s the extraordinary part of it. He couldn’t have left her for more than a few minutes, but somebody knew and took advantage of his absence. When he got back he found her sitting in the chair, dead!”

  Sir Richard was staring at the gloves he held, smoothing them with his hand. It seemed as though realisation were coming to him slowly.

  “Poor soul,” he said, at last. “It’s a pretty beastly end, isn’t it?”

  “You knew her, didn’t you?” asked Constantine.

  Sir Richard nodded.

  “We all knew her in those days,” he answered. “She was one of a crowd. She’d altered a lot, though. I shouldn’t have known her if I’d come on her suddenly. I fancy that marriage wasn’t much of a success.”

  There was pity in his voice now and Constantine reflected with an inward smile that, after all, he was only acting true to type. His nerves had always been of the kind that go with beef and muscle and he had never suffered from an over-developed imagination. Mrs. Vallon was less shock proof.

  “It’s horrible,” she repeated. “Can’t we go away? I don’t feel as if I could ever go into that room or sit in that chair again.”

  Constantine was about to reply when the door opened. A police inspector, solid and imperturbable, stood in the opening.

  Sir Richard immediately took charge of the situation. As a confirmed motorist, he considered that he had acquired a technique in dealing with the police.

  “Dr. Constantine has been telling us what has happened,” he said. “This lady, Mrs. Vallon, would like to get away. I suppose there’s nothing to keep us, is there, officer?”

  The inspector consulted his note book.

  “Sir Richard Pomfrey?” he demanded.

  Sir Richard nodded. His tactics did not seem to be meeting with their usual success.

  “I must ask for your address and those of this lady and gentleman.”

  It was not until he had entered them in his book that he answered Sir Richard’s question.

  “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to remain here until the detective inspector from the Yard arrives. It will only be a matter of minutes now. If you’d stay in this room, please.”

  He turned and, before they could expostulate, the door had closed behind him.

  Sir Richard glared at Constantine.

  “The thing’s absurd!” he declared angrily. “He can’t keep Mrs. Vallon here against her will!”

  “He can and will,” said Constantine. “Let’s make the best of it till Scotland Yard takes over. How’s the tooth, Mrs. Vallon?”

  Mrs. Vallon stared at him blankly.

  “The tooth?” she repeated. “Oh, I’d forgotten it. It isn’t hurting at all now. This awful business. ...”

  “Is an efficient but drastic way of curing toothache,” pursued Constantine imperturbably. “Unfortunately one could hardly set up as a dentist on those lines!”

  Ignoring Sir Richard’s still simmering wrath he strolled to the window and stood looking out into the fog-bound street. He had no intention of allowing his choleric friend to put himself in the wrong with the police at this stage of the affair. “I was wondering about the movements of that rather battered little person I met as I was coming in,” he continued. “Was he here when you arrived?”

  Mrs. Vallon looked up quickly, her interest aroused.

  “Yes, he was,” she answered. “Surely you don’t think he had anything to do with it? He looked such a poor little creature.”

  “I was thinking more of the questions we are likely to be asked,” said Constantine. “We may as well get our facts straight now. What, exactly, did happen?”

  “When I arrived? Well, I met Richard in the hall and we came in here together.”

  “I’d just come out of the consulting room,” put in Sir Richard grudgingly. “The fellow’s appointment was immediately before mine. He came in here, looking pretty gruesome, a couple of minutes before Davenport sent for me.”

  “Who was here when you came back with Mrs. Vallon?”

  “The little man and a fat woman, smothered with jewels, who I suppose was Mrs. Miller,” answered Mrs. Vallon.

  “Which of them left the room first?”

  Mrs. Vallon hesitated, but Sir Richard cut in quickly.

  “Mrs. Miller. She went to take her appointment and I stayed on, keeping Mrs. Vallon company until her turn came. The little chap went out about ten minutes later.”

  “How long was that before I arrived?”

  “Directly, I should think. You must have met him in the hall.”

  Sir Richard had a distinct impression that, until Constantine left them to investigate the commotion in the hall, he and Mrs. Vallon had not had three consecutive minutes alone together that morning, but it would seem he was mistaken.

  “Oh, no,” expostulated Mrs. Vallon. “He left at least five minutes, nearer ten, I should say, before Dr. Constantine got here. I know, because I had my eye more or less on the clock. Davenport kept me waiting three quarters of an hour last time I came and I meant to expostulate with him if he did it again. You see, I’d sent in word that my tooth was aching.”

  Constantine�
�s interest quickened.

  “You’re sure of that?” he asked sharply.

  She nodded.

  “Quite.”

  “And yet I met him on the doorstep when I arrived. Where was he in the interval?” he said slowly.

  “Probably washing his face in the lavatory,” suggested Sir Richard. “The poor little chap was in the deuce of a mess. Looked as if Davenport had been extracting with a vengeance.”

  Constantine turned once more to Mrs. Vallon.

  “Have you any idea what time it was when Richard got back from the telephone?” he asked.

  She reflected for a moment. Her eyes met his and he knew that, though she realised the danger of the question, she had determined to be frank with him.

  “Let me see,” she said. “I know I looked at the clock then because I was beginning to get annoyed with Mr. Davenport. It was close on ten minutes past twelve. I’d meant to go to my hairdresser’s before lunch and I came definitely to the conclusion then that I shouldn’t have time, even if I got my appointment at once.”

  “And I arrived at twelve, to the minute. Davenport must have been fiddling with that door for at least five minutes before I joined him. It looks as if the door was already locked when I met that man on the doorstep.”

  His eyes were once more on the street and, as he spoke, he saw the figures he had been waiting for loom through the fog and mount the steps. He swung round and went swiftly to the door.

  “Stay where you are. I think release is at hand,” was all he vouchsafed to them as he left the room.

  He reached the hall in time to meet the new arrivals. One of them, an enormous man, wrapped in a voluminous frieze overcoat, greeted him with surprised cordiality not unmixed with amusement.

  “On the spot again, Dr. Constantine,” he chuckled, as he shook hands. “How much have you got up your sleeve this time?”

  Constantine laughed. He and Detective Inspector Arkwright had cemented their friendship since their first meeting at the Noah’s Ark Inn and this was one of several standing jokes between them.

  “I’m fumbling,” he admitted. “In any case, you’ll know as much as I do in ten minutes. Meanwhile, I’ve got a request to make.”

  He drew him aside and laid the case of Sir Richard and Mrs. Vallon before him, with the result that, five minutes later, he was seeing them off from the front door.

  He watched their taxi disappear into the mist, then made his way back into the house. Arkwright and his minions were in the consulting room and Constantine, as he passed the door, felt no desire to join them there. His course carried him on and through a door situated at the end of the passage, behind the stairs.

  It was ten minutes before he emerged, rubbing a pair of hands black with grime on a once spotless handkerchief, satisfaction written on his countenance. He had cause for elation, for he had almost, if not quite, laid the spectre that had been haunting him ever since the discovery of the tragedy.

  As he crossed the hall Arkwright came out of the telephone box.

  “Been ringing up the ambulance,” he said. “The photographer’s at work in there now. Nasty mess, isn’t it?”

  He surveyed Constantine, his lips expanding into a slow smile.

  “Have you got a line on anything, sir?” he asked. “If you have, it looks rather as if it had taken you up the chimney!”

  Constantine tucked away his handkerchief.

  “I hate dirty hands,” he said, “and the trouble is that, as things stand, I can’t wash them.”

  Arkwright looked puzzled, then leaped to his meaning.

  “The lavatory!” he exclaimed. “Have you found anything there?”

  Constantine led him down the hall and into the lavatory. The reason why he had been unable to use the basin was immediately apparent. The water had been allowed to run out, but a small, pinkish residue still remained and there was a smear of blood on the china rim of the basin. The towel, flung carelessly on a chair, was mottled with bloodstains.

  “Washed his hands here before making his get-away,” commented Arkwright.

  “And this is where he went,” added Constantine, as he crossed to the window and opened it.

  Arkwright peered out, then, supporting himself on his hands, raised himself until he was seated on the sill, his head outside the window.

  “Across the leads and in at the window next door,” he substantiated. “He’s left his tracks plainly enough in the soot. You didn’t get out there?”

  Constantine eyed him reproachfully.

  “At my age?” he answered. “No, those tracks are not mine. I collected all my soot from the window-sill, which, by the way, bore no traces except a smear made, I imagine, by our friend’s leg when he climbed out.”

  Arkwright let himself down into die room.

  “I noticed that before I sat on it,” he said, with a touch of amusement. “We’ll follow this up. Anything else, sir?”

  “A question, first. You’ve got a list of the patients out of Davenport, I suppose. Who was the little man whose appointment was just before Mrs. Miller’s?”

  Arkwright thrust a grimy hand into his pocket and produced a note book.

  “Name of Cattistock,” he read out. “Address, Pergolese Hotel.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “That’s as far as I have got up to the present,” Constantine concluded. Rising to his feet, he produced tobacco from his pocket and began filling his pipe. Arkwright extracted a match box and held it out to him.

  “You did some useful spade-work before I arrived,” he admitted ungrudgingly. “Funny about that little chap, Cattistock. It doesn’t sound as if he’d got the temperament or the physique for a job of that sort. And yet Davenport knows nothing about him, except that he came on the recommendation of an old patient, the manager of the hotel he’s staying at. From Davenport’s account he must have been feeling genuinely groggy when he came out of the consulting room. He says he gave him no end of a gruelling. Doesn’t think he’d be fit for much for several hours to come. In spite of which he hasn’t got back to his hotel yet and they’ve heard nothing of him.”

  “He may have been taken ill on his way there,” suggested Constantine, hoping devoutly that this was not the explanation.

  His mind had been more at ease since the discovery of the marks on the leads outside the lavatory window, but there still remained a persistent pin-prick, that time to be accounted for when Sir Richard was presumably trying to get onto his rooms on the telephone. He was hoping it wasn’t pricking Arkwright, too, when, almost as though he had been following his train of thought, the detective spoke.

  “I shall have to see Mrs. Vallon and Sir Richard Pomfrey,” he said. “Your account satisfies me all right, but I must get their statements direct. Meanwhile, I’ll just verify the times as I’ve got them here.”

  The two men were in Davenport’s waiting room. Mrs. Miller’s body had been removed and the consulting room sealed. Arkwright had taken the statements of the dentist, his mechanic and Betts, the manservant, and had made his way along the leads and in at the window of the house next door. The house had been standing empty for some time and everything was thick with dust. This had been sufficiently displaced to show that someone had passed through the ground floor room that gave onto the leads, indeed the window the intruder had used had been left open. But the tracks were too blurred and indistinct to show whether the person had been coming or going, and, beyond verifying the murderer’s means of entry or exit, Arkwright had discovered nothing. The detective had then adjourned to the dentist’s waiting room, where he and Constantine had been pooling the information they had gathered.

  Arkwright turned to his note book which lay open on the table.

  “According to the dentist,” he said, “Cattistock’s appointment was for eleven and he arrived on time. The next on the list was Sir Richard Pomfrey, and Betts, the manservant, states that he arrived sometime between eleven fifteen and eleven thirty. Sir Richard told you that he was in the waiting room when
Cattistock entered after the dentist had finished the extractions and that he left him there when he went to the consulting room. Betts then showed in Mrs. Miller, whose appointment was for eleven thirty. He was aware of this and noticed that she was about ten minutes late, so we may take it that she arrived about eleven forty. Betts saw Cattistock in the waiting room when he showed her in. He was also there when Sir Richard came back with Mrs. Vallon about five minutes later. Betts, who opened the door to Mrs. Vallon, can only give the time approximately, but there is no reason to think he is far wrong. Immediately after they had entered, Mrs. Miller went into the consulting room and, according to what Sir Richard and Mrs. Vallon told you, Cattistock, some five minutes later, left the waiting room. Therefore, if we include the dentist, five people knew that Mrs. Miller was in the consulting room from, say, approximately, eleven forty-five onwards.”

  Constantine nodded.

  “They knew, certainly,” he admitted, “but I can see no evidence that any of them went prowling on the leads. Isn’t this rather waste of time?”

  Arkwright shrugged his shoulders.

  “It’s ordinary routine work. In nine cases out of ten it leads nowhere, and in the tenth it goes all the way. Where had we got to? Eleven forty-five. From now onwards the times become more important and it’s a nuisance that that ass, Betts, should have taken the opportunity to stand on the doorstep and gossip with the doctor’s man from number thirty-eight just then! He’s created a nice little alibi for himself, but, as a result, he never saw Cattistock leave the waiting room, nor did he see Sir Richard when he went to the telephone, though he noticed him crossing the hall from the telephone box while they were trying to get the consulting room door open. He says he was only on the doorstep for ten minutes, but I should put it at nearer a quarter of an hour myself. Anyway, he vouches for it that no one left the house, via the front door, until you arrived at twelve and met Cattistock going out. According to your account, which tallies with Mr. Davenport’s, the times are as follows. Eleven forty-five, approximately, Mrs. Miller goes into the consulting room, leaving Sir Richard Pomfrey, Mrs. Vallon and this man, Cattistock, in the waiting room; eleven fifty Cattistock leaves the waiting room; twelve o’clock you arrive, meeting Cattistock on the doorstep, and Sir Richard, immediately afterwards, goes to the telephone. Meanwhile, Davenport, according to his account, leaves Mrs. Miller in the consulting room and goes to his workroom in the basement at a few minutes to twelve. At twelve five he returns and finds the door locked, and at twelve ten Sir Richard goes back to the waiting room. We may therefore take it that the murder occurred in the short interval between, say, eleven forty-eight, when the dentist left his patient and twelve five when he returned and found the door locked. That leaves the murderer eight minutes in which to do a job which he timed with amazing exactness.”