Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries

by Anthony Gilbert

  but it appeared none of his horses had been out that morning, and he hadn’t hired a hack. Besides, he’d been on the golf course, and a man can’t be in two places at the same time. The only thing I did discover that might conceivably help was that the course ran quite close to the place where Alcock had been found.

  “I thought and I thought. Suppose he’d timed himself to be at this particular spot at the time when Alcock would probably be passing? Even so, how could he have been responsible for the jockey’s death? He’d been carrying golf-clubs, certainly, but Alcock hadn’t been killed by a golf-club, but by a blow from a horse’s hoof.

  “And then, suddenly, I knew what had happened. Don’t ask me how. If it wasn’t for these gleams of inspiration the life of a policeman would be harder than it is, and it’s hard enough, heaven knows, what with criminals being so unsporting and detective writers giving them so many hints. I went down to see the village blacksmith.

  “ ‘Shod any horses for Mr. Grey lately?’ I asked him. “ ‘One,’ he told me. ‘A mare. About a week ago.’

  “ ‘Going a bit lame, wasn’t she?’

  “ ‘Well, no, not that I could see. Don’t know what he wanted her shod for, come to that.’

  “But I knew. Grey had come down himself, which was a bit unusual, for he was one of these high and mighty chaps, who think themselves a cut above the rest of the world. After that I went up to Mr. Grey’s house, choosing a time when he wasn’t there, and told the servant that I was expected and I’d wait. They put me in the library and I routed among his books and found what I’d expected. Mind you, in a way I don’t know that I wanted to find it,

  because even a policeman doesn’t like to think of what humanity is capable of. But I was right. I even got the weapon in due course, as ugly an object as ever I’ve seen.” He took a pencil out of his pocket and began to draw something on the back of an envelope. “Know what this is?” he asked us.

  Well, there wasn’t much question as to that. It was a stick like a club, with a horseshoe on one end. When we began to understand, we knew what he meant when he said he’d half-hoped he wouldn’t find it. There was a famous Continental criminal called The Spider, who’d liked making use of it. Paris was his happy hunting-ground, till they ran him down at last. His method was to get a couple of horseshoes and fasten them on to a wooden club, and you had as murderous an implement as any criminal could desire. Grey had read his story, and seen in it a fine chance to put Alcock out and secure his own future. He must have waited till the boy came past, took a toss over the wire, and then walked in and deliberately murdered him.

  “But was that necessary?” we asked. “Wouldn’t it have been enough if he’d incapacitated Bluebeard? Why risk his neck in that foolhardly fashion?”

  “He couldn’t afford not to put the jockey out of the way,” Field told us, with a shade of contempt for our slower intellects. “Alcock would know the horse hadn’t come down by himself. And Grey had got to clear the wire before anyone discovered his share in the plot. He literally didn’t dare let Alcock live. And I suppose he thought he was safe enough. Any doctor would have sworn death was caused by the kick of a horse. There’d been a horse on the spot, a queer-tempered horse at that. Grey thought Bluebeard would get the blame, and he’d save his own skin. He was steeped in debt and worse; if he couldn’t put up a considerable sum of money he’d have got five years, and I suppose he thought it was worth risking his life. He planned it all pretty carefully; the anonymous letters began arriving long before any hint of danger threatened Bayliss and his jockey. A more feeble criminal would have sent one to himself, but he didn’t make that mistake. But it’s a fact that no criminal ever remembers everything, and what Grey forgot was that there would be no blood on Bluebeard’s hoofs. Or perhaps he thought no one else would think of that. And so,” he wound up, passing his tankard to be refilled for the third time, “when I hear about horseshoes being lucky, I remember two men who were killed by them, as you might say, and it’s not the kind of luck I’d appreciate, even if it came my way.”

  He Found Out Too Late Just How Good an Artist Mabel Was

  At 6:30 that evening the telephone in the flat below mine began to ring and 15 minutes later Herbert Barry emerged, carrying an overnight case. Later he assured the police that at that time his wife, Mabel, was alive and well.

  At 9 o’clock I was conning a letter I’d collected on my way up when my doorbell rang. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Jones,” said Barry, tall, pale, worried as a hen. “But have you heard any sounds during the past hour or so?” These old houses are like sound boxes, you can hear everything.

  I told him no, and what was wrong? Well, it seemed he couldn’t open the door of his flat, the lock seemed to have been tampered with, and though he’d rung several times there was no answer.

  “It’s so mysterious,” he went on in agitated tones. “There was this telephone call at 6:30... .”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I heard it.”

  “Someone asked me to go at once to Mouseley Green Hospital where my brother was dangerously ill. I know the call came from Mouseley Green, because it’s one of the few remaining exchanges where you have to get the number through an operator, but when I got there they’d never heard of Syd. And now I can’t get in. I wish you’d come down with me.”

  “You can’t imagine someone broke in and murdered Mrs. Barry,” I joked.

  Though I could think of a number of more improbable things. Mabel Barry was a tough, smart cookie, as inquisitive as a cow. She operated behind halfclosed doors, and drawn window curtains.

  After I found her tampering with my mail I made a point of collecting it as soon as it arrived. She had a job as part-time receptionist at a hotel, so you never knew when she might be around and when the flat was empty.

  He was right about the lock; I forced an entry through a window. Mrs. Barry hadn’t gone out, she was in the back room, sprawled on the couch, her heard lolling at an unnatural angle, her face an unnatural colour. The drawer of a bureau had been forced and papers were scattered.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” pleaded Barry—he seemed in a daze— “all she kept there were letters and accounts.”

  But when the police arrived and started ferreting they found most of the letters worth their weight in gold-dust. Her job at a cosmopolitan hotel had given Mrs. B more than adequate scope to employ her talents. And the accounts consisted mainly of a bank book whose contents were proof that Mabel had had a very good sense of values.

  Barry denied all knowledge of his wife’s side-line activities, but the police, who’ve heard ’em all, know that when a wife dies suddenly and violently, the obvious suspect is the husband. If I hadn’t been able to confirm Barry’s story of the phone-call things might have been even worse for him. They were bad enough as it was.

  Since X could be presumed to have removed any document incriminating him there was no clue to his identity, and nothing to show that the busted drawer wasn’t part of a phoney set-up.

  No one could be traced to show that Mabel Barry was alive after 6:45, the time when her husband insisted he’d left the premises. They couldn’t trace the call, which had obviously been made from a call-box, and it turned out that Barry was the sole legatee.

  Murder’s been done for a lot less than she’d got stashed away, and though he continued to swear he knew nothing about it, you didn’t have to believe him. However, a coroner’s jury grudgingly gave him the benefit of the doubt, and he left the court to be regarded as another chap who’d got away with murder.

  After Mabel’s funeral he came to see me, to tell me he was leaving London at once, going back to Norfolk to live by a river and watch birds.

  “Nice work if you can get it.” I said. And he answered smoothly he thought he could.

  “There’s my wife’s savings and I’m almost due for the pension. And with a little help from you ...”

  “From me?”

  “One good turn deserves another. I understa
nd you get a heavy sentence for perjury. Suppose I were to tell the police, Mr. Jones, that I know you can’t have heard that ’phone ring from your flat, because you weren’t at home that evening—not by 6:30, that is—what would they do?”

  “Ask for proof,” I told him.

  He smiled. “Ever since you’ve discovered my late wife’s skill with a stream kettle—and what an artist that woman was! I bet you didn’t know she’d opened your letter till you found a copy of the original inside, said original going to join her collection in the bureau drawer—ever since then you’ve always dashed down to get your mail before she could say knife! But when I left the house at 6:45 that Tuesday evening there was a letter for you in your box, which proves you weren’t back by 6:45, or you’d have collected it. And you weren’t back because you were in Mouseley Green making that call (a local box would have given you away).”

  “You call that proof?” I cried. “I could have been at the pictures, drinking with a friend ...”

  “You’re forgetting the letter,” he said, “the one Mabel collected from your box about four months ago, the one signed Cynthia. The police would have been very interested in that letter, only when they examined the drawer it wasn’t there.

  “They were never happy about Colonel Heath’s death, suicide seemed so improbable. Much more likely that Cynthia Heath and an unknown lover had plotted to get him out of the way.

  “It must have been a shock to learn that all the lovely lolly for which you’d got rid of the old man went to good causes if she re-married. Tell me, do you think she knew about the will and simply wanted a sucker to rid herself of a tiresome elderly husband?”

  “You must be mad.” I said. “My name was never mentioned. And seeing there is no letter ...”

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t be too certain of that. Still, it’s beside the point, because you’re going to bring my income up to subsistence level, aren’t you? You won’t find me grasping, I’m too grateful for that. I’d never have dared.

  “But, before we start discussing terms, let me give you one piece of advice. If you should contemplate a third murder, do your homework more thoroughly this time. If you’d checked at Mouseley Green before you made that call, you’d have realised I’d know it was a phoney from the start, because Syd had taken off for Majorca that morning.

  “Pity! That was one of the few things Mabel didn’t know.”

  He laughed. How he laughed. “The letter killeth,” he quoted. “It was that that put me on to you from the start.”

  “Stop that,” I shouted.

  But he wouldn’t.

  So I had to make him.

  A Day of Encounters

  I noticed the woman the minute she came into the clinic—St. Barnabas’ Eye Clinic where I go every six weeks about a little trouble I have. I’m Martita Browne and you’ve probably seen my books all over the place. Eggheads despise them, but I consider myself a benefactress. Even in the Affluent Society lots of women lead pretty dreary lives. So my books are like a magic mirror that reflects them as they see themselves, not as they appear to husbands or families—beautiful, loyal, courageous, even though they may scream at the sight of a mouse, and above all irresistible to men; and, naturally, only to be had at the cost of a wedding ring. Services like that are worth paying for, and, to do my readers justice, they pay at the rate of substantial royalties to me every year.

  This newcomer—I realized at once I’d never seen her before, you get to know the regulars—didn’t resemble my heroines in any way. For one thing, she was past forty, not good looking, though she had a lively face that was somehow demure, too, which wasn’t without attraction. But though her clothes were good—her crocodile bag alone had set someone back about sixty pounds, her scarf was pure heavy silk, and her shoes handmade—she lacked something, a kind of vitality perhaps. There was a man with her, presumably her husband, a fair, quiet sort of fellow, but not living on the breadline—far from it.

  An expensive house in the suburbs, I thought, with central heating, a double garage, storm windows, at least one trip abroad every year, and not a package tour at that.

  I usually sit in a sort of alcove that holds only three or four chairs, and hardly anyone else ever chooses them. The patients have an idea that if they sit in the middle of the room they’ll be seen sooner, but, of course, it doesn’t help; it’s all poppycock—you’re seen when the doctor’s ready for you and not before. I’d brought the proofs of my new book with me—Not Wooed but Won— and I thought I might get quite a lot of work done while I waited. I could see it was going to be a busy clinic this afternoon.

  I was a bit surprised when the newcomer came to sit beside me. “Is it always as crowded as this?” she asked. “Willy said he’d be back in an hour and he does hate waiting.” Then before I could reply she saw the proofs on my lap—I hadn’t begun, so the title page was on top. “Are you Martita Browne?” she asked. “Did you write that?”

  I knew what was coming, of course. She’d always longed to write, but there’d never been time; her life story would make a wonderful plot, and since she’d never use it—and of course I’d disguise the n a m e s . I f I ’ v e heard that once, I’ve heard it a hundred times. I was wondering how I could suggest that none of my readers would be interested in a woman in her forties when she gushed on, “People say that sometimes your heroes are too good to be true, but of course that’s nonsense. I know because—well, you might say I married one of them. You might have taken Victor for your model.”

  “I thought you said his name was Willy,” I murmured.

  “Victor was my first husband. Willy’s as different as chalk from cheese. Victor had everything—good looks, a marvelous figure, tall, dark, alluring—it wasn’t surprising all the women were after him. I’m sure they must all have gasped when they heard it was me he was going to marry. I wasn’t even young—twenty-eight—you’d never have a heroine of twenty-eight, would you, Miss Browne?”

  Well, she knew I wouldn’t. My readers never see themselves as more than twenty-five at the very most.

  “I wasn’t in the least like one of your heroines,” the voice babbled on. “My father—he was a minister with a great sense of fun—everyone said so—used to call me Miss Brains-Before-Beauty. Count your blessings, he’d say. Brains are often a better investment. And I put mine out to usury like that man in the Bible, whose ten talents turned into twenty talents. I never really thought I’d get married.”

  “But there was Victor?” I remarked.

  “Yes. He came into this office where I was working—actually, it was my own business—and it was like the sun coming in. He was a bit younger than me, but he said he preferred mature women. Girls never had any conversation except hairdos and what he called ‘parish pump’ subjects.”

  “What was his job?” I asked. It was quite automatic. I couldn’t have even a minor character in a story without knowing his background, and obviously Victor wasn’t going to be minor.

  “Oh!” For the first time she sounded evasive. “He was a sales representative—went round to the big industrial houses.”

  “A success?” I bored on. You might say it was none of my business, but the woman had thrust herself on me and I had a right to some return. Anyway,

  you can never be sure where you’ll find plot and character ideas.

  “You’d have thought with those looks and that charm he couldn’t fail,

  though he always warned me it was cutthroat competition, and I suppose he wasn’t ruthless enough. Still, at first everything went all right, and then he started going ‘on the road.’ You know what that means? The firms—and they weren’t always the same firms—sent him to the outlying districts. He made a joke of it. Someone’s got to carry news to the heathen, he’d say, but—oh, Miss Browne, it was like playing Shaftesbury Avenue and then finding yourself sent out with a second class repertory company. Luckily I wasn’t called Miss Brains-Before-Beauty for nothing. I’d sold my business when I got married, so I had a nice lit
tle nest egg put by, and believe me, it came in very useful.” Candidly, I didn’t think this was getting me anywhere. A plain woman had been married for her money—that’s what it amounted to. But of course there had to be a third party, otherwise there was no story at all. And even I couldn’t believe she would turn up with a lover. “So what happened?” I encouraged.

  Her reply startled me. “Oh, he died.”

  “Victor died?”

  “Yes. It was a bit sudden.”

  I had a fresh idea. “Sudden enough to attract the attention of the police?”

  She took off her handsome gloves and folded them carefully on her knee.

  Her rings would have paid my rent for a year.

  “Anyone could tell you are a writer. You know all the answers.”

  But did I? There’d been an odd note in her voice when she said, “Oh, he died.” Not grief, not relief either, but a sort of lack of confidence, as if she couldn’t be certain. But that was nonsense. You either know your husband’s dead or you don’t. Or perhaps she knows he wasn’t, and he was blackmailing her. It seemed pretty obvious she’d struck it rich in her second marriage.

  I was so deep in calculations that I missed the next few sentences, but what I did hear nearly blew me out of my chair.

  “You couldn’t call it murder, could you?” the voice pleaded. “I’ve waited eight years to hear someone say that, only there was never anyone to tell.

  I don’t even have a sister.”

  And wouldn’t tell her if you had, I thought grimly. Not if you’ve got the sense you were born with.

  I realized now, of course, that she had no doubts about dear Victor’s death—a posh funeral and wreaths three-foot deep, most likely. No, it was the way of it that worried her. But—murder? I hadn’t time to think straight.

  “What did the police make of it?” I asked. “I mean, who mentioned murder?”