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

by Molly Thynne

  Constantine glanced at him.

  “Meaning that he must have been on the premises, waiting his opportunity.”

  “Precisely. He must, into the bargain, not only have known the hour of Mrs. Miller’s appointment, but been aware of the nature of the work Davenport was doing for her, work that would take him to his workroom in the basement and necessitate his leaving her alone in the consulting room. So long as Davenport was with her he could not hope to act.”

  “That is sound enough,” agreed Constantine. “Though, if it weren’t for the knife, one might include the possibility of the crime being unpremeditated and take it that the man had merely taken advantage of a heaven-sent opportunity. Where the weapon has been brought in from outside, however, one may safely go on the assumption that the thing was planned in advance.”

  “It was planned all right,” Arkwright’s tone was grim. “That overall wasn’t Davenport’s, you know.”

  “Do you mean that the murderer brought it with him?”

  “Must have. The moment Davenport got a chance to examine it he saw that it wasn’t a make that had ever been used in this house. We found a pair of rubber gloves underneath it. Did you know that? They were badly stained and don’t belong to anyone on the premises. It was a clever move, that overall, when you come to think of it. The chap had to get across the hall from the lavatory and, with all the precautions in the world, he couldn’t count on no one’s seeing him. If Betts had been in his usual place he would probably have thought nothing of it if he noticed a man dressed in an overall cross the hall. It’s a sight he’s accustomed to and he’d have taken it for granted that he was Davenport or one of his assistants and never given him a second glance. That’s the meaning of the overall.”

  Constantine looked up quickly.

  “And Mrs. Miller, seeing a man in an overall come into the room, would have suspected nothing,” he said, in a hushed voice.

  Arkwright nodded.

  “Pretty grim, isn’t it?” he agreed. “The chances are that he stood behind her and, bringing his left hand round from the back, tilted her head back, holding the knife in his right hand. Until he actually used violence there would be nothing abnormal in his movements. She may even have put her head back herself and opened her mouth as he came towards her. It is quite a common thing for patients to do when the dentist approaches them. By the way, you know the husband’s on his way here?”

  “I understood you were sending for him. Does he know?”

  Arkwright looked slightly uncomfortable.

  “No, I didn’t tell him. He rang up from his office about twelve fifteen, while Davenport was trying to get that door open, to ask if his wife had had her appointment, as he proposed to pick her up in the car. Betts answered the phone and, being under the impression that the consulting room was empty, told him she had gone. Betts is an ass. He admits now that he never saw her leave and that she invariably asked for a taxi if she’d sent her car away as she did today. Anyway, Mr. Miller rang off and went round to his club for lunch. We’ve only just managed to trace him. He thinks his wife is ill and is on his way to fetch her.”

  Constantine frowned.

  “And what, may I enquire, is the idea?” he asked. “The thing seems to my unsophisticated brain unnecessarily heartless.”

  Arkwright gave him a meaning look.

  “There’s been a certain amount of gossip about the Millers, I’m thinking,” he said. “What have you heard, sir?”

  “Nothing definite against either of them, though they were hardly an attractive couple, by all accounts. I’ve known her by sight for a long time, but I’ve never seen the husband. I’ve always understood that he was a rich jeweller and, I believe, has quite a good name in Hatton Garden. She was Lottie Belmer, an undistinguished ornament of the musical comedy stage, before she married him. Rumour has it that they were a rather ill-assorted pair.”

  “That tallies with my information,” agreed Arkwright, “and I can add to it, owing to a rather curious coincidence. I was going through our files the other day with reference to a burglary in North London and I came across Miller’s name. He landed in England from Cape Town in nineteen twenty-six, when we received a warning from the Cape Town police to keep an eye on him. It appears that he had been arrested there as a receiver of stolen goods but was discharged owing to lack of evidence. The stuff was traced to his manager, who was convicted, but there was no actual proof that Miller was aware of what was going on. We acted on the information received, but found no cause for suspicion. All the same, at the risk of seeming heartless, I’d prefer to spring this on him, before he has time to collect his thoughts. We’re looking for a motive and he may be in a position to help us.”

  “You’re sure nothing was taken?”

  Arkwright shrugged his shoulders.

  “How can we be? She was literally covered with stones, all of them valuable, but something may have been taken. That’s one of the things her husband ought to be able to tell us. Do you want to be present at the interview, sir? He should be here at any moment now.”

  Constantine glared at him.

  “I don’t. I detest your inhuman methods.”

  Arkwright’s smile was disarming.

  “But you won’t disdain to profit by them,” he suggested. “I confess I should like to report to you and hear your opinion.”

  Constantine rose to his feet.

  “I dine at eight,” he said, with a severity that was not very convincing. “At the Club. You will find me at our usual table.”

  “If I can get away, sir,” answered Arkwright.

  As he was about to leave Constantine made a suggestion. His tone was casual, but there was an impish gleam in his eyes.

  “You might take this opportunity of finding out whether the Millers have any connection with China or America,” he murmured thoughtfully.

  Arkwright permitted himself a chuckle of pure glee.

  “I wondered whether you’d be able to resist that, sir,” he retorted. “It was I who brought Meekins to see you, you remember and I was there when he showed you the knife.”

  Constantine, who was never slow to appreciate a joke at his own expense, laughed.

  “I might have guessed you’d notice the resemblance,” he said. “Of course I haven’t handled it and, in any case, my knowledge of such things is negligible, but the knife we found beside Mrs. Miller’s body looks uncommonly like the one Meekins got from that Chinese knife-man in San Francisco.”

  Arkwright nodded.

  “We shall know soon enough,” he answered. “By this time it will be in the hands of our man at the Yard. I’ll report to you this evening.”

  The fog was still thick enough to delay locomotion and it was past eight when Arkwright arrived at the small, bohemian club at which Constantine entertained those of his friends capable of appreciating the efforts of one of the best chefs in London. He had put up Arkwright for it soon after their first meeting at The Noah’s Ark and the detective had fallen into the habit of dining there whenever he could get away early enough from the Yard. Constantine was awaiting him and brushed away his apologies with one short word of enquiry.

  “Well?” he demanded, as he led the way into the dining room.

  “A hard day and precious little to show for it,” was Arkwright’s pessimistic rejoinder. “Taking things in their order,” he began, as he unfolded his napkin, “there’s Miller. He can’t help us. I showed him the knife and he has never seen one like it. Says he knows of no one with a grudge against Mrs. Miller or himself, for the matter of that. Nothing was said about the Cape Town episode by either of us, so he probably thinks that we are not aware of it. He has never been either to America or China and has had no dealings with any Chinese at any time in his life. That’s his account, of course. We may be able to check it, up to a point, later. The knife, by the way, is Chinese and of the type used by knife-men imported by the Chinese Tongs in Chicago and San Francisco. To go back to Miller, he took the news of his wife’
s death normally. It appeared to come as a complete surprise to him and he was just about as shocked and horrified as one would have expected. He gave me the impression of being more than a little scared as well. As regards his wife’s jewellery, he does not know if anything is missing, but will get a complete list of what she was wearing from her maid. I am going on to his house from here tonight to get it, when I shall see the maid and may get a line on something from her. I don’t imagine it to be the kind of house in which the servants are likely to be close-mouthed. So much for Miller, though I’ve a feeling that he’s holding something back on us.”

  “Any news of Cattistock?”

  Arkwright cast a significant glance in his direction.

  “None,” he said shortly.

  “None? Do you mean to say that the man has never reached his hotel? Why, he was hardly fit to be about when I saw him!”

  “All the same, he’s vanished. They’ve neither seen nor heard anything of him since he left the hotel to go to the dentist in the morning. His luggage is there, unpacked, and he said nothing to them about leaving. The hospitals and police stations have been canvassed, but, so far, there’s no trace of his having met with any kind of accident.”

  “Did you dig up anything about him?”

  “Very little. I’ve just been down there myself, interviewing the manager of the hotel, but I got very little more than he had told our man earlier in the day. Cattistock arrived on November the twelfth, two days ago. Last night he asked the manager if he could recommend a good dentist, mentioning that he had spent the greater part of his life abroad and was now living in the country and that the man he had been to there was not satisfactory. The manager, who describes him as a quiet, rather serious gentleman, very pleasant in his manner, gave him the name of his own dentist, Davenport. Says he believes he rang him up early next morning and made an appointment. This tallies with Davenport’s account. Beyond that, nothing is known of him.”

  “He didn’t mention in what part of the country he was living.”

  “No. I questioned all the likely and unlikely people. His luggage consists of a couple of suitcases, unlabelled, and, if he wrote any letters, he posted them himself.”

  “What about his clothes?”

  “We ran into a blind alley there. There were three suits, all from the same tailor, an old-established, inexpensive firm in the city, and, on enquiry, we found that they were made for him about a year ago and sent to the Euston Hotel, where he was staying at the time. The tailors were given the impression that he had only just arrived in England, but, beyond the fact that he paid his bill promptly, they know nothing about him. His shirts and underclothes bear various manufacturers’ labels and are all well known lines that are turned out by the thousand. The same may be said of his socks, ties, gloves, etc., and the three pairs of ready-made shoes we found. Any papers he possessed, he must have carried on him.”

  “No books? A man usually reads something in the train or in bed.”

  “A pocket Bible by his bed, with the name ‘Cattistock’ scrawled in pencil inside the cover, and a cheap reprint of ‘Esmond’ on the writing table. He has covered his tracks pretty thoroughly.”

  “But not necessarily purposely,” pointed out Constantine. “In these days of ready-made clothing there is nothing unusual in such an outfit. It’s only what you would find in nine out of ten of the rooms in an inexpensive hotel. So much for Cattistock. Anything further?”

  “There’s Davenport, of course. But I confess I find it difficult to imagine why an old-established and eminently respectable dental surgeon should cut the throat of one of his most profitable patients! Apart from the fact that he did it in the way most calculated to draw attention to himself!”

  “The wiliest of all the devices employed by criminals in fiction, you must remember,” Constantine reminded him wickedly. “‘No murderer would be such an ass as that,’ boomed Inspector Muttonhead, rolling his little pig’s eyes, etc., etc. Congratulations, Arkwright, you did it beautifully!”

  Arkwright chuckled, but his face grew a shade redder.

  “Oh, I’m not disregarding him, by any means,” he asserted, “but you must admit that though it comes off all right in books it’s a fairly dangerous game to play in real life! Still, he undoubtedly had the time and the opportunity.”

  “To which, in my role of gifted amateur, I am prepared to add that Davenport, to my knowledge, is the last man in the world to cut one of his patient’s throats for any reason whatsoever. I’ve even known him to exhibit genuine compunction when he hurt me, which shows an almost mawkish sentimentality on the part of a dentist. I haven’t got the official mind so I’m quite ready to give him a clean bill of health.”

  “If I could do the same I should no doubt save myself any amount of time and trouble,” admitted Arkwright ruefully. “Failing Davenport, there remain Mrs. Vallon and Sir Richard Pomfrey. I took their statements this afternoon.”

  “If Mrs. Vallon is a suspect, so am I,” retorted Constantine. “I was with her from twelve o’clock until after the discovery of the locked door.”

  “All the same, if my times are correct, Davenport left Mrs. Miller three or four minutes before you arrived,” Arkwright reminded him, with mock solemnity.

  “Do you suggest that, in the course of those four minutes, Mrs. Vallon, with incredible swiftness, dressed herself in an overall, which she was no doubt carrying in her very small hand bag, dashed into the consulting room, killed Mrs. Miller, whom she did not even know by sight, removed the overall and returned to her seat by the fire? And all this unperceived by Richard Pomfrey?”

  Arkwright’s guffaw so startled an old gentleman at the next table that he swallowed his soup the wrong way and spent the rest of the meal in endeavouring to wither the detective with a streaming and indignant eye.

  “I’ll grant you Mrs. Vallon,” conceded the delinquent. “After all, as you point out, her alibi is practically as good as your own. But you can’t say the same for Sir Richard Pomfrey. From twelve o’clock till twelve ten, he was out of the waiting room. Betts was on the doorstep, gossiping, and no one can check Sir Richard’s movements during that ten minutes.”

  “The telephone call?”

  “The call to Sir Richard’s rooms was put through, we’ve traced it,” admitted Arkwright, “but he only said a couple of words to his man. As for the delay he complained of, such a thing cannot occur in the annals of the telephone service! We never expected to trace that! He could have committed the murder and still have had time to telephone on his way back to the waiting room.”

  “It would leave him very little margin,” objected Constantine.

  “Whoever did the thing had very little margin,” retorted Arkwright. “Come to that, the actual stabbing would only have taken a second.”

  “And the motive?”

  Constantine was fighting a losing battle and he knew it. Arkwright eyed him narrowly.

  “Did you know, sir, that Sir Richard saw a good deal of Mrs. Miller when she was Lottie Belmer?” he asked.

  “I knew that he frequented the set she moved in and, I believe, was acquainted with her, but this was a very long time ago. I’m sure he never knew her in any intimate sense and he told me he had seen nothing of her for years.”

  “He told me that, too. But he admits that they were acquainted in the past.”

  “Which seems hardly a motive for killing her now,” retorted Constantine. “I never moved in that set myself. My wild oats were sown years before and I have even forgotten most of the current gossip, but I do remember that Sir Richard’s name was associated with a very different lady, one of the principals at the Pagoda, and that, at the time, Lottie Belmer was definitely supposed to be the property of someone else whose name I can’t recall. Sir Richard’s affair ended with the marriage of the lady in question and it is years since his name has been connected in any way with the Pagoda girls.”

  “That was in Arthur Vallon’s day, I suppose?” said Arkwright.

>   Constantine nodded.

  “Vallon owned the theatre in those days,” he answered. “Rightly or wrongly his name was coupled with several girls in succession. I can’t remember whether Lottie Belmer was one of them. Of one thing I can assure you. She was never, at any time, of the type to appeal to Richard Pomfrey, even in his most callow days.”

  Arkwright glanced at him.

  “You’re sure you’re not a bit prejudiced in his favour?” he queried demurely.

  Constantine’s eyes blazed suddenly.

  “Of course I’m prejudiced,” he snapped, with a little burst of temper. “His father was one of my oldest friends and I’ve known Richard all his life. He might kill a man with his fists, in a moment of temper, but he’s incapable of cutting a dog’s throat, much less that of a human being!”

  “As his father’s friend you would say that even if you didn’t think it,” Arkwright reminded him.

  “I’ve no doubt I should,” admitted the old man, “but the point is that, in this instance, I believe it.”

  “Well, I’m keeping an open mind,” said Arkwright. “We don’t even know yet whether robbery wasn’t the motive. This man, Cattistock, was with her in the waiting room and no doubt had a good look at all that stuff she was wearing, and Cattistock’s missing. That’s all to the good from your friend Sir Richard’s point of view.”