[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Enough,’ said Dame Beatrice, with her reptilian smile. ‘We will now step in and put an end to these matters. I think we know enough to begin to make things very uncomfortable for our suspects.’

  Fergus walked over to her and pushed his muzzle adoringly into her thin ribs. She laid a yellow claw on his head.

  ‘As for you,’ she remarked, ‘you are undoubtedly a heretic in your own right, for whereas, by all the canons of decency and good taste, you should cleave unto Laura, who is your meat, drink and comfort, you prefer to pursue strange gods who do not even care very much about you.’

  The dog sighed, lay down at her feet and thrust his head hard against her knee.

  ‘How do you mean, you are going to begin making things very uncomfortable for our suspects? You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ said Laura anxiously. ‘Somebody who has committed five murders isn’t going to worry much about a sixth.’

  ‘Have no fears for me. I shall keep all my wits about me. I am suffering from a bad attack of conscience. You see, I have felt almost certain, from the time of the first death, that I knew who was responsible, and although, in view of the lack of concrete evidence, I do not see how it could have been done, I feel I ought to have been able to prevent four of these five deaths by denouncing the murderer of Karen Schumann.’

  ‘We still don’t know whether all the murders were done by the same person, don’t forget.’

  ‘I am certain that they were, and I shall now take the necessary steps.’

  ‘Do I ask for details? You see, I’m responsible for your safety, and if you’ve really rolled your sleeves up and are going into action, it might be as well for me to be within hailing distance.’

  ‘That evening, the evening of Karen Schumann’s death,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘when Fergus left you and went off across the common …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was misty and beginning to get dark?’

  ‘Yes. I lost sight of Fergus in less than a hundred yards – in not more than fifty or sixty yards, perhaps.’

  ‘That is what I wanted to be sure of, although I took it that such was the case.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of Mrs Schumann, I don’t think she owns a bike.’

  ‘That is my point. If the mist and the darkness made visibility a matter of less than a hundred yards, whoever enticed Fergus away from you could have been on foot. If Mrs Schumann is the murderer, she would have blown her personal call on the dog-whistle, and the dog, who had been trained at her kennels to respond to it, would have obeyed the summons immediately. The visibility was such that you could not see her, for she could have been two hundred yards or more from where you stood, and she knew that, although the dog could hear the whistle, you could not. All she had to do, after that, was to walk the dog across the common as far as the woods, following the path which would still have shown up sufficiently in the darkness and which, doubtless, she knew well, lead him to the body and command him to stay. He obeyed this order, as we know, until I came along and countermanded it.’

  ‘There are a lot of objections to this theory, you know.’

  ‘I realise that. It is one of the reasons I had for not acting upon it earlier. You refer to the difficulty we should have in proving that she knew you were out with the dog that night, and that you would not return by the shorter and more obvious route. It is, indeed, a problem, as you infer.’

  ‘I don’t see how you’d ever be able to prove she was there on the common that night, and, if you can’t prove that, your whole theory goes west.’

  ‘We still have your evidence that the dog left you and was found more than seventeen hours later, standing guard over the body.’

  ‘Granted. But the defence would make mincemeat of that sort of evidence.’

  ‘They might not regard it as evidence at all. Evidence has to be capable of proof, even if the proof is only the credibility of the witness.’

  ‘Nobody would dispute your credibility and I hope nobody would asperse mine, but what we’ve got at present to offer the prosecution is negligible.’

  ‘Another thing I should like to know,’ went on Dame Beatrice, ‘is whether it is possible for a particular call on a dog-whistle to be taught to another person.’

  ‘So you do think James is still in the picture!’

  ‘We must leave, as you yourself have often said, no stone unturned.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be very easy for anybody to teach another person how to whistle up a dog, because, of course, the pupil wouldn’t be able to hear the call. Wonder whether you could do it by teaching him by means of a sort of Morse Code – you know, dashes for the long blasts and dots for the short ones.’

  ‘It sounds possible. One could only judge of the success of such a scheme by its effect on the dog. Anyhow, whether he likes it or not, I am determined to obtain an interview with Mr James. This will best be accomplished by bringing Superintendent Phillips to bear on him.’

  ‘Get him to the police station, do you mean? He’ll beef a bit at that, won’t he? Phillips has nothing on him so far.’

  ‘Superintendent Phillips has always made him his first choice in the matter of Karen Schumann.’

  ‘What approach will you make?’

  ‘I shall give Superintendent Phillips the results of your researches at the library and indicate that they do much to suggest that either Mr James or Mrs Schumann is our murderer. That will fit with either his choice of murderer or my own.’

  ‘He knows they’re the only real suspects already, and won’t my researches and the conclusions we’ve drawn from them seem to him a bit far-fetched, anyway? He’ll regard them as a lot of ballyhoo, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘With Mr James studying to become a Doctor of Divinity, and Mrs Schumann with her husband’s theological library at her disposal?’

  ‘But, you know, James had access to that library, and, anyway, I find it almost impossible to believe that these murders were committed by a woman.’

  ‘But for the incident of Fergus and the (presumed) dog-whistle, so might I. I am beginning to wonder – no, as a matter of accuracy, the thought has been in my mind for some time – whether perhaps Mrs Schumann hoped to gain more than her daughter’s small fortune by that daughter’s death.’

  ‘You don’t mean …?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do. She and James are much of an age, and she is a personable enough woman and at an age when women often behave in what might seem to others an irrational way.’

  ‘Go off their heads for a bit, you mean? Yes, that’s right enough. What would she be – forty-five to fifty? But if the defence could prove that she wasn’t responsible for her actions when these murders took place …’

  ‘She would be sent to a mental hospital, which, at least, would be preferable to being sent to prison.’

  ‘Do you think she’s off her head?’

  ‘I think she was sane enough when she planned and carried out her daughter’s murder. After that, one cannot be sure, although I should be inclined to think that the murder of Maria Machrado could be explained in terms of expediency and therefore was the action of a sane and vicious woman.’

  ‘And the other three?’

  ‘Murder lives by what it feeds on, and mass murderers have a dangerous lust for power, are completely self-centred and, especially if they believe that they have thrown dust in the eyes of the police, inordinately conceited. In this case, besides, I think there is no doubt that the murders of Lucia, Mrs Castle and this Irish girl from Swansea, being motiveless from any rational point of view, were simply intended to lead the police away from any theories they might have formed concerning the motivated murders of Karen Schumann and Maria Machrado.’

  ‘But we don’t know what the motive was for the death of Maria Machrado, and, as for Mrs Schumann and James, I thought that, earlier on, she said she didn’t care for him much.’

  ‘A statement which, at present, I shall entirely disregard. But now to gain audience of Superintendent Phillips.’
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  (3)

  ‘If you have further information for us, Dame Beatrice,’ said Phillips, ‘I wonder whether you’d mind if my colleague from Scotland Yard, Detective-Inspector Maisry, joined us?’

  ‘By all means let us have him in, Inspector.’

  Maisry had been allotted a room of his own, and, having been summoned by Phillips, suggested, in his gentle tones, that, as Dame Beatrice’s evidence might require further study, a shorthand writer in the person of his detective-sergeant might be advisable. Dame Beatrice deprecated the use of the word ‘evidence’, since all she and Laura claimed to have discovered was an interesting but possibly valueless sidelight upon the cases under review.

  ‘But let us have a shorthand writer, Detective-Inspector,’ she said, ‘because the importance (if any) of what I have to tell you is that I have one (I do not say the) explanation of the puzzling messages left upon the bodies. If my solution is the right one, it confirms my previous view that our suspects are but two.’

  ‘And the two, Dame Beatrice?’

  ‘Edward James and Karla Schumann.’

  ‘You think we may dismiss Otto Schumann from our minds, then?’

  ‘That is for you to decide when you have heard what I have to say.’

  Maisry called in his sergeant.

  ‘Shorthand – verbatim,’ he said. ‘Callum’s speed is one hundred, Dame Beatrice, if that will suit you.’

  ‘Admirably.’ She took out her own notebook in which she had inscribed the results of Laura’s researches. ‘My findings are the result of my secretary’s work in the public library and concern various heresies, so-called, which raised their thoughtful, learned and, occasionally, extremely popular voices against the teachings of the Church from the fourth to the thirteenth century. This is what Laura discovered.’

  Maisry’s eyebrows went up and he smiled, but he did not interrupt until the flow was ended. Then he said,

  ‘Before we discuss what you have told us – and I agree that it is full of interesting possibilities – perhaps Callum will read back to us what he has written, pausing at all the proper names which, as a shorthand writer, he has, so far, contracted and also has spelt phonetically. We had better have the full longhand spelling, Callum, I think, in case we need to check this information against any later evidence which may come our way.’

  This was done.

  ‘I’ll make a typed copy in triplicate, as usual, sir,’ said Callum, a long, lean, dark-visaged man of Irish ancestry. ‘Would you like it done at once?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll sound the buzzer if we need you in here again before Dame Beatrice leaves. And now,’ he went on, when the door had closed behind the detective-sergeant, ‘perhaps, Dame Beatrice, we could have your full analysis of these discoveries. How did you come to hit on this idea of the heresies in the first place?’

  ‘It really began, I think, with a remark made by James (although he says he has no recollection of making it) to Karen Schumann. He seems to have called her “a misguided little Aryan”. The more I thought this over, the more unlikely it seemed to me that he should have called her any such thing. Although she was of German parentage, she was, in all other respects, an Englishwoman, having been born, brought up and educated over here. Then I realised that the word could be spelt in two ways, and that, as it was used by James during the course of a theological discussion, the chances were greatly in favour of the second spelling, which indicates a follower of an heretical priest of Alexandria named Arius.

  ‘I did not pursue this theory further at the time because it seemed, in itself, pointless, for I had made up my mind that the identity of Karen Schumann’s murderer was sufficiently indicated by another factor.’

  ‘You thought it was Mrs Schumann,’ said Phillips, ‘while the rest of us, including the Assistant Commissioner himself, plumped for Edward James.’

  ‘And James is not altogether out of the picture even now,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I propose to attempt, with your permission and kind assistance, to banish him from it completely.’

  ‘How do you suggest you do that?’ enquired Maisry.

  ‘By having him here at headquarters for official and, I hope, alarming questioning.’

  ‘And you think this will exonerate him?’

  ‘I am sanguine that it may.’

  ‘Well, if you will brief us, we will put your questions to him. I hope you will agree to be present during the interview and will not hesitate to “chip in” if the interrogation is not to your liking or if you want him to clarify or expand upon any of his answers. I only hope we can eliminate him from our enquiries, but, personally, I think he’s got a good deal of explaining to do, and, of course, in spite of what you’ve told us this morning, we’re still keeping an eye on Otto Schumann for the murder of Maria Machrado. We’ve come to the conclusion that the first two killings were deliberate, and by two different hands, and that there’s a joker in the pack who committed the other three.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  How Should I Your True-Love Know

  Oh, Tommy’s gone! What shall I do?

  Away down Hilo.

  Find me a man to love me true –

  Tom’s gone to Hilo.’

  * * *

  (1)

  James seemed a very different man from the cold and self-possessed schoolmaster whom Dame Beatrice had met in the headmaster’s study at the comprehensive school. He was obviously ill-at-ease when she faced him again at the police station.

  ‘So you have found a way to force me to see you,’ he said sullenly. ‘I thought you would.’

  ‘No question of force, Mr James,’ said Maisry in his smooth and gentle way, ‘but we shall be very glad of your cooperation, and Dame Beatrice, like yourself, is here at our invitation. We thought that you might prefer to visit us here in a district where you are a stranger, rather than have us go to your lodgings or to the school.’

  ‘Vastly considerate of you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Irony will get us nowhere, sir.’

  ‘Well, what do you want from me? Surely it’s clear to you by now that the murderer of my fiancée is a madman with a lust to kill, and that her death was no more significant to you, so far as I can understand it, than the deaths of the rest of these unfortunate women. I can’t think what help you think I can give you, and I protest, most strongly, about being dragged again into a case which you have not the wits to solve.’

  The words, in themselves, were bold enough, but it was clear that they were nothing but bluster. The man looked ill and was afraid. Not only the psychiatrist but the two police officers were well aware of the fact.

  ‘All we want from you, Mr James, is confirmation, or the reverse, of some dates,’ said Maisry. ‘We are relying upon your special knowledge, the result of your extensive reading and research.’

  James, at this, expressed open alarm.

  ‘What are you hinting at?’ he asked. ‘What dates? What special knowledge? I tell you I know nothing which will help you. Why are you hounding me?’

  ‘My dear sir,’ said Maisry, ‘we should be in dead trouble if we hounded anybody. We simply need your help. Five women have been done to death. To be frank with you, we believe that we are trying to find three murderers, two of whom are sane and culpable, the third of whom is a madman. As it happens, Dame Beatrice has discovered what appears to be a tie-up between these persons, but, so far, unless you can suggest an explanation, this tie-up does not lead to anything except a blank wall.’

  ‘You believe there are three murderers living in this area? That seems incredible,’ said James. Dame Beatrice noted that his voice and his attitude had changed. He spoke with an air of interest and animation; his sullen demeanour and hangdog look had vanished; he was sitting up straight in his hard-backed chair and was leaning slightly forward as though anxious not to miss a word of what was being said.

  ‘Well, sir, consider the facts,’ went on Maisry. ‘I need not recapitulate them now. That will come later, perhaps. It is these dates we are con
cerned with.’

  ‘Yes? What dates?’ The question, on the face of it, was innocent enough, but Dame Beatrice was conscious of a slight stiffening in the attitude of Superintendent Phillips. Maisry, however, remained urbane and undisturbed.

  ‘It seems possible,’ he said, ‘that the numbers on the pieces of paper which we found attached to the bodies may have some significance as dates. Take the first one, for example. You remember what it was, I suppose?’

  ‘I am not likely to forget it, but why should you suppose it was a date?’ He looked directly at Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I believe you also remember my asking you whether you could tell me any signficant dates in the fourth century A.D.’ she said, ‘or something to that effect. You gave me, I recollect, the dates of the reign of the emperor Julian the Apostate, of whom, I admit, I knew nothing but his name.’

  ‘I remember that, of course, but the dates were not the same as the number found on – found on Karen. Do you mean that the other bodies …?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phillips, speaking for the first time during the interview. ‘We’ve managed to keep it from the Press, but similar pieces of paper, not all with the same wording but all bearing a number, were found on the other bodies. We tried various solutions, and the idea that they might be dates occurred to Dame Beatrice as well as to ourselves, although our interpretation of them was not the same as hers.’

  ‘By the way,’ said Maisry, ‘how did you know that a piece of paper was found on Miss Schumann’s body?’

  ‘Mrs Schumann told me. She saw it – was shown it, I believe – when she identified the body.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. We asked her whether she could explain it, but she said she could not.’

  ‘I see. Well, what do you expect me to do?’