by Molly Thynne
“This is just a line to say for God’s sake do not breathe a word to Charles of what you told me about Julius Bloomfield. I told you how potty he was about him. He might be his son instead of his nephew from the way he behaves, but I did not think he had got it in him to behave like he did today. After I wrote to you this morning I had a beast of a row with Charles. The same old thing, a couple of bills he could have paid without noticing. It is Julius who makes all the trouble, you would think the money belonged to him instead of Charles. He would be all right if it was not for Julius. Anyway, Charles said things to me and I went further than I meant and told him I could tell him a thing or two about his precious Julius and his goings on before he joined him in Switzerland. I thought Charles would have a fit, but he had got me started and I went on spilling the beans. And in the middle of it in walked Julius. He did not say much, but you should have seen his face. If he could have killed me then and there he would have. I tell you, he frightened me. He can do what he likes with Charles and he will get his own back through him. I never breathed your name, but he may have guessed. But, for goodness sake, keep quiet when you come about what you told me. I am certain now he is the fellow you knew in Russia, but you said he might not remember you. Anyhow I have burnt your letters. We can talk it over when you come, but do not say a word till you have seen me. Yours with love, Lottie.”
Arkwright looked at the envelope.
“Written on the twelfth,” he said. “He got his own back all right, two days later. This must have just missed her. It went to her lodgings and from there to the Theatrical Agent’s. They forwarded it, hence the delay. You weren’t far wrong, sir.”
Constantine had picked up the letter and was re-reading it carefully.
“Those two women literally held Bloomfield’s life in their hands and never realised it,” he said. “If they had they would have been more careful. Mrs. Miller evidently detested him and she must have jumped at the chance of poisoning her husband’s mind against him. Then, when it was too late, she got frightened. Well, I’m afraid that’s the whole of our case against him. No one saw him on the occasion of the Miller murder except Cattistock and his was only a fleeting glimpse.”
“There’s that pendant of Mrs. Miller’s,” Arkwright said thoughtfully. “Bloomfield took it as a blind, of course. We may come on it among his things. We’ve failed to trace the surgeon’s coat and gloves, but he may very well have bought those abroad. He was in Paris on business about ten days before the murder.”
“There’s one problem that still confronts us,” observed Constantine. “Madame Abramoff’s letter to Miller.”
“I’m beginning to see light there,” answered Arkwright. “We’ve admitted all along the possibility that it might be a forgery. Unfortunately there were no very adequate specimens of her writing available for comparison, apart from the signatures we got from Karamiev. Bloomfield, on the contrary, could have laid his hands on any of her letters to Mrs. Miller. He may have written the letter and posted it just before leaving Paris ten days before the murder. He would deal with it with the rest of Miller’s correspondence on his return. It would then merely be a question of altering the date on the postmark, an easy enough job if you know how to do it. There’s a sure test for that, however cleverly it’s worked.”
“Photography?”
Arkwright nodded.
“The photo-micrographic camera. If there’s been any fancy work done on that envelope we shall know it. I’ll be off now. See you later, sir.”
“If you’re still there to see me,” observed Constantine mildly. “Judging from that report I can hardly imagine a less pleasant job than that of arresting Malin.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As the two men parted outside New Scotland Yard Constantine placed a hand on the detective’s arm.
“You’re dealing with a desperate man, Arkwright,” he said.
Arkwright, realising the old man’s anxiety, felt oddly touched. Outside his work he was a person of few ties and his friendship with Constantine was a very real factor in his life.
“Not for the first time, sir,” was all he said, but he determined to get in touch with him and set his mind at rest at the earliest opportunity.
He had already rung up Miller’s office and been told that the jeweller and his secretary had left over an hour ago. Accompanied by three plain-clothes detectives he drove straight to Miller’s house. Roper opened the door.
“Mr. Bloomfield in?” demanded Arkwright.
“He’s with Mr. Miller in the library, sir,” answered the butler, turning in the direction of the library door.
Arkwright barred his way with an arm like a rod of iron. At a sign from him one of the men ran down the steps and descended into the area. Followed by the other two Arkwright brushed past the open-mouthed butler into the hall. A second later the three men were in the library, with the door closed behind them.
Miller was seated at the big writing table facing them. On the blotter in front of him was a pearl necklace and, behind him, stood Bloomfield, holding a list from which he had evidently been checking the pearls.
Before either of the men had time to move Arkwright was on the other side of the table and had one hand on Bloomfield’s shoulder, the other inside the cuff of his coat.
“I have to arrest you, Julius Bloomfield, alias Peter Malin, and you, Charles Miller, for being concerned in the murder of Vera Abramoff on the night of Monday, November the fourteenth, and to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you,” he said rapidly.
He felt Bloomfield stiffen under his hand. Beyond that first, involuntary movement the secretary made no sign, but remained rigid, his eyes fixed on the cowering figure of his employer.
Miller, his face ashen and distorted, twisted half round in his chair, saw the second detective at his elbow and went to pieces completely.
“You cannot arrest me,” he shrieked. “I know nothing, nothing, I tell you. Julius, tell them I know nothing ...”
His voice snapped like a thread. His body that, a second before had been writhing in an agony of apprehension, seemed to freeze into stillness. And, above him, silent and menacing, towered the figure of Bloomfield.
Then Arkwright spoke.
“Coming, Bloomfield?” he demanded. “Or have I got to take you?”
As he uttered the words he moved a step towards the door, drawing his prisoner with him. Bloomfield made no show of resistance, but his eyes never wavered from the figure of Miller, who still sat, crouched and motionless in his chair, his hands gripping the edge of the table. With a jerk of his head Arkwright motioned to the detective to take him and the man laid a hand on his arm. The contact seemed to galvanise Miller into action. He wrenched himself to his feet and made a frenzied attempt to get past the detective, who tightened his grip and held him in spite of his futile efforts to break free.
“Let me go,” he sobbed, his face riven and distorted with terror. “Don’t you see? Julius, he will ...”
He flung his arm in the direction of Bloomfield.
He was too late. The detective on guard at the door, with a yell of: “Look out, sir!” hurled himself forward, but Bloomfield’s right hand was already out of his pocket. The revolver it held spoke once and Miller, with a little sigh, slipped down onto the carpet and lay still.
Bloomfield only spoke once on his way to the station.
“For a crime committed in this country there is no extradition?” he demanded.
“You will be tried at the Old Bailey,” Arkwright told him.
With a deep breath Bloomfield sank back in his seat.
Arkwright rang up Constantine and, late that evening, called upon him at his flat.
“Carling thought he was doing a bunk and grabbed him and held him bang in the line of fire,” he said, at the end of his recital. “The poor beggar was trying to take cover! He won’t live through the night. He was conscious when they got him to the hospital and he made a statement. Bloomfield’s his ne
phew, by the way. Miller was with him all through that time in Russia and declares he wouldn’t have lived a week if he’d gone back there. They want him badly, apparently, and he seems to have got the idea that if his uncle had told us all he knew, we should have let them have him. He was wrong, of course, but the mistake cost Miller his life.”
“Was Miller party to his wife’s murder?” asked Constantine.
“I think not. He declares it came as an appalling shock to him. He never dreamed that Bloomfield would go to such lengths. His version is that if Bloomfield had not overheard Mrs. Miller’s threats against him he would never have known that she suspected his identity. Miller knows he is dying and no doubt believes he is speaking the truth, but he was so entirely in Bloomfield’s hands that it’s difficult to believe that he wouldn’t have told him about the scene with his wife.”
“What do you make of his feeling for Bloomfield? Was he merely terrorised, do you think?” asked Constantine.
Arkwright shook his head.
“It was far more complicated than that. He was under no delusions about the man. He’d been his jackal, as it were, all through those days in Russia. Towards the end of his statement, when his grip on things was beginning to weaken, he spoke almost with admiration of him and there seems no doubt that he was completely dominated by him.”
“Bloomfield had all the qualities that Miller lacked,” said Constantine, “and Miller probably realised it. It is easy to guess what he and his people may have suffered under the old regime. His mind had probably been irretrievably warped by things he had seen in Russia as a child. No doubt Bloomfield, in his eyes, was all that he would have wished to be himself if he hadn’t been born a weakling and a coward. Miller would no doubt have shrunk from the idea of murder. He might even have dared to oppose Bloomfield, but it would have been because he was afraid of the consequences, not from any inherent sense of decency.”
“He certainly didn’t instigate the murders,” agreed Arkwright. “According to his statement he knew nothing till he was confronted with his wife’s body. He recognised the knife, of course, and, from then on, lived in an agony of terror. He was afraid of us and what we might find out, but, I think, still more terrified of Bloomfield. He declared to me that he had no suspicion that the Abramoff letter was a forgery and went to the station fully expecting to meet her there. When she did not come he still suspected nothing, being convinced that that was the train she had meant to travel by. I questioned him as to Bloomfield’s whereabouts that evening and he admitted that he was not in the house at the time of Madame Abramoff’s death. It was Miller, of course, who was heard typing in the secretary’s room, but I’m inclined to believe his story, which is that Bloomfield told him that he had to go out on urgent business connected with the Miller murder and that he wished him to cover the fact of his absence. One must remember that he had been on tenterhooks ever since he had seen his wife’s body that morning and was probably prepared to follow any suggestion of Bloomfield s blindly. Bloomfield told him late that evening what he had done. I gather that they both omitted to foresee that Miller might be called upon to identify the corpse of Madame Abramoff. Miller was in consequence unprepared and, in his panic, made the fatal mistake of concealing the fact that he had never seen her.”
“Bloomfield could hardly have been saddled with a worse accomplice,” said Constantine. “I should imagine that he simply did not dare confide in him. Did you get anything out of Miller concerning the business of Greeve?”
“Yes. Bloomfield intercepted the whole of that correspondence and the first Miller heard of it was when Bloomfield rang him up at his office after receiving our telephone call announcing Greeve’s arrest and asking him to call at the Yard; Bloomfield primed Miller then as to the story he was to tell. The enamel pendant was, of course, one that they already had in stock and Miller brought it with him from Hatton Garden that afternoon, so as to have it in readiness if it were needed to corroborate his story. By the way, a messenger did deliver a parcel at Miller’s office on the day he declared to us that Greeve had brought the pendant. We have failed to trace him and the head clerk is unable to describe him, but he certainly was not Greeve, who was playing darts in the Goat and Horns at the time. Bloomfield was certainly an adept at using the material he had to hand. He saw Greeve, as you suspected, after his release, and put him wise to the yarn about the pendant.”
“Talking of pendants, did he tell you what had become of his wife’s emerald?”
“No. He was getting very feeble towards the end and I did not press him. He was only too ready to talk, seemed to have a sort of craving to get it all off his chest. He must have been through Hell since his wife died. His fear of Bloomfield was the only thing that prevented him from giving the show away earlier, I imagine. He was shot through the spine, by the way, and the lower half of his body is completely paralysed, but his brain is quite clear. He literally talked himself into a state of collapse. If the hospital people hadn’t considered his case absolutely hopeless, I shouldn’t have been allowed to interview him.”
Constantine rose and pulled a small inlaid table up to the fire. Placing a box of Halva at Arkwright’s elbow, he began to set out the chessmen.
“I’m glad it’s over,” he said, “and that I’m free to cultivate my garden. Yours is a nasty job, Arkwright, and, for the future, you can prosecute it without any interference from me.”
Arkwright, who was mixing himself a whiskey and soda, turned to him, a shrewd twinkle in his eyes.
“To the next time, sir,” he retorted, raising his glass.
A few minutes later the Miller case and all its ramifications had become a thing of the past. They were playing chess.
The mystery of Mrs. Miller’s pendant was not cleared up until after her husband’s death in hospital, when his business was being valued for probate. The emerald was identified in a tray of unset stones. Miller had broken up the setting and added the gem to his stock. If he had lived long enough to draw the insurance money and dispose of the emerald he would have realised on its value twice over and made a very pretty profit on his wife’s death.
THE END
About The Author
MARY ‘MOLLY’ THYNNE was born in 1881, a member of the aristocracy, and related, on her mother’s side, to the painter James McNeil Whistler. She grew up in Kensington and at a young age met literary figures like Rudyard Kipling and Henry James.
Her first novel, An Uncertain Glory, was published in 1914, but she did not turn to crime fiction until The Draycott Murder Mystery, the first of six golden age mysteries she wrote and published in as many years, between 1928 and 1933. The last three of these featured Dr. Constantine, chess master and amateur sleuth par excellence.
Molly Thynne never married. She enjoyed travelling abroad, but spent most of her life in the village of Bovey Tracey, Devon, where she was finally laid to rest in 1950.
By Molly Thynne
and available from Dean Street Press
The Draycott Murder Mystery
The Murder on the Enriqueta
The Case of Sir Adam Braid
The Crime at the ‘Noah’s Ark’: a Christmas Mystery
Death in the Dentist’s Chair
He Dies and Makes no Sign
Molly Thynne
He Dies and Makes no Sign
“He had his enemies, I suppose?”
“Disputes, you mean? Over the merits of Puccini and Wagner, Strauss and Verdi! But people do not entice an old man from his home many years afterwards to avenge Wagner or Puccini!”
It was a shock to the Duchess of Steynes when her son announced his engagement to the grand-daughter of an obscure violinist, Julius Anthony; but still more of a shock was the discovery of Anthony’s murdered body in the cinema at which he played.
Dr. Constantine and Detective-Inspector Arkwright join forces in their third (and final) case together. Their only clue at the outset is the dead man’s mysterious assignation at the Trastevere restaurant, one of Lon
don’s most fashionable eateries, and located, as it happens, on the property of the Steyneses. The biggest challenge at first appears to find any kind of motive for the old man’s slaying – until their investigations lead in a fiendishly unexpected direction.
He Dies and Makes no Sign was first published in 1933. This new edition, the first in many decades, includes an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
CHAPTER I
RAIN, blurring the white outline of the cliffs at Dover; rain, playing with needle-pointed fingers on the Customs House roof; rain, sweeping slantwise across the fair green fields of Kent; the dreary, monotonous patter of rain on the carriage windows, and then respite as the train drew in under the shelter of the echoing roof of Victoria Station.
Dr. Constantine, watching the blank faces of the waiting porters as they slid, like the numbers on a tape-machine, across his vision, relapsed still further into despondency. He was returning from a chess tournament on the Continent and was in the grip of one of his rare moods of depression, engendered partly by a vile crossing and partly by the humiliating conviction that he, who prided himself on finding food for entertainment in the most unlikely places, had been hopelessly and utterly bored.
That he had been defeated at the tournament annoyed rather than depressed him. What he did resent acutely was the cause of his downfall, a lady from the Balkans whose name he could neither pronounce or remember, who had been all that a woman should not be, pug-nosed, dough-faced, and monstrously fat. The only word she knew outside her own language appeared to be “sheck”, and she used it with a monotonous regularity that drove him to a frenzy of dislike and impatience and caused him to make an exhibition of himself, as a chess player, that even now he grew hot to think of. No, he had not enjoyed the Continent, and it seemed from the look of things as though he were going to enjoy England even less.
