Miss Geranium had been nervously crumbling her bread. Miss Hectoring looked at her once or twice with anxious affection in her eye. Suddenly Miss Geranium rose to her feet. The chair fell backwards with a clatter.
“Hypocrites,” she cried passionately.
Charles could not help smiling at the unanimity with which the serried rows of munching jaws stopped dead, and the eyes of everyone flashed nervously in her direction.
“Hypocrites. The curse of the Lord is coming upon you all, you unworthy sinners! Repent before it is too late! Oh, dear——” She collapsed and burst into long, shuddering sobs.
Miss Hectoring tried vainly to calm her. Miss Sanctuary hurried to her side. “There, there, my dear,” she soothed. “You mustn’t let these things upset you.”
Miss Geranium’s sobbing died away. “You’re a good woman,” she murmured.
Charles, sitting a few feet away, could hear Miss Sanctuary’s protesting “Nonsense.”
“Yes, you are,” insisted the other, “too good to be in this den of vice!”
“You’re a little feverish, dear,” said Miss Sanctuary, feeling her forehead. “Come upstairs and lie down.” She drew Miss Geranium to her feet and led her out of the room, her eyes still glittering wildly.
There was an embarrassed silence.
“I will not stand that woman,” shouted the Colonel savagely. “I will not, I——” His voice died to a protesting murmur.
“I really think she should be in an asylum, poor soul,” whispered Mrs. Salterton-Deeley to her neighbour, Mr. Nicholas Twing, at the other end of the room. “It would really be far kinder.”
Unfortunately, Mrs. Salterton-Deeley’s whisper was of the penetrating kind. It reached Miss Hectoring, and she plunged like a lion—a sea lion, perhaps—to the defence of her friend.
“I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Salterton-Deeley,” she said, advancing to her table. (Mr. Twing’s eyes twinkled with amusement, but he gave his whole attention to his food as if to dissociate himself entirely from his table companion.) Before you’re much older, you’ll end in an asylum too. Look at your spoon, trembling like a leaf.”
Mrs. Salterton-Deeley attempted to quell her with a glance. The soup in her spoon, arrested in mid-air, slopped over the sides. Miss Hectoring, glowering like a bulldog, stopped there long enough to make the red-haired woman drop her eyes. Then she left.
As soon as the door was closed, Mrs. Salterton-Deeley tittered. No one else laughed.
At another table fragments of a conversation between Eppoliki and Mrs. Walton drifted Charles’s way. The Egyptian’s one good eye rolled wildly. “Maybe a human hand killed Mrs. Budge,” he said, “maybe not. But what you call the motive force, the striking power—that was some ill deed, perhaps in the poor lady’s past, who knows?”
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” asked Miss Arrow tonelessly. She had come in to see Mrs. Walton, whom she had met when she stayed at the hotel, and had stayed on to lunch.
Miss Arrow gazed wearily at Eppoliki. She was never animated at the best of times. She smiled her way through life, frail but efficient, with her small, pale, plain face and her waxen skin, forbidding sympathy by her manner before it was offered. She made no advances; she asked for no friendship; she dwelt perpetually in the contemplation of the unwelcome guest which waxed fat unceasing in the delicate fabric of her flesh. Radium, X-rays and surgery might retard its growth, but the day would come when, like the ivy on the wall, it would bring down in ruin its host and protector. Already the unearthly beeswax transparency of the cancer subject had invaded her cheeks. Miss Arrow, thought Charles, made one wonder whether society’s pursuit of the murderer was not excessively theatrical and romantic. Jack the Ripper slayed his tens, Cancer and T.B. their tens of thousands...
“Oh, yes, it is an established fact,” answered Eppoliki vaguely. (Charles imagined him answering some of his examination questions with similar brevity and finality.) “You all believe in the power of evil, whatever you say. Recently I want a good leather case, value, say, thirty-five shillings. I say to Miss Mumby, ‘You buy me a new case, or I put a curse on you.’ She got me the case,” Eppoliki concluded triumphantly.
“That’s blackmail, Eppoliki,” said Miss Arrow laughingly.
Mrs. Walton shivered. Her lids dropped over her eyes as if the conversation bored her.
“Miss Mumby credulous lady, perhaps,” said Eppoliki, “but it is true what I tell you. The hand holds the dagger, the brain conceives the plan, but by our evil past it is aimed and stabbed.” He thought a moment. “I do not think Mr. Budge commit the murder.”
“I feel as if I were living in a madhouse,” groaned Viola to Charles under her breath.
“Just let me clear up this case,” whispered back Charles, “and I will take you out of it.”
“Is that a proposal?”
“It wasn’t meant as one, but I’m a man of my word, and if you take it as one, I’ll stick to it.”
Viola laughed. The noise sounded strange in the dining-room.
V
In a comfortable sitting-room in Scotland Yard, Budge’s annoyance was rising to fever heat. After being whirled through the streets of London at top speed in the Invicta, as if they were in pursuit of a car bandit, he had been kept waiting for nearly two hours. It is true that sleek young men with patent-leather hair had been in at frequent intervals to console him, offer him magazines and flute their surprise at the non-appearance of a certain Superintendent Chelmsford, but none the less he had waited.
Finally a message had come in to say that Superintendent Chelmsford presented his humblest apologies, but he simply could not be back until half-past two. Inspector Perkins hoped that Mr. Budge would kindly lunch with him. Fuming, Budge consented.
Charles did not wait till lunch was over. He slipped upstairs to Winterton’s sitting-room and seated himself in an armchair with his back to the door. With his head sunk in his shoulders, no sign of Charles was visible, but no one could say he was actually hiding.
A few minutes later Winterton strolled into the room. He did not look around him, but went straight to the bureau from which Charles had previously extracted the object of his search.
He gave a startled exclamation as he found it missing. He rummaged excitedly through the drawers.
Charles rose silently to his feet. He placed his eyeglass in his eye and his hands in his pocket. “It’s no good, Winterton, I know it isn’t there, because I’ve taken it.”
Winterton spun round and staggered back. “G-g-good gracious,” he said at last, his teeth chattering. “You gave me such a fright. What did you say?”
Charles repeated himself.
Winterton gaped at him for a moment, his mouth opening like that of a fish on dry land. Then he burst into a torrent of abuse. “You thief,” he ended. “Give it back at once.”
“Oh, no,” replied Charles, “you naughty boy! I have confiscated it.” He smiled cunningly.
Infuriated, Winterton rushed at him.
Charles placed one hand on Winterton’s chest and shot him into the armchair, in which he subsided. “Sit down and no nonsense,” he said sternly.
Winterton sat. His eyes gleamed malignantly, and his hands plucked incessantly at the sides of the chair.
“Listen to me, Winterton. I’ve got your week’s supply of heroin here in my pocket. Budge is in jail and you’re not going to get any more.”
Winterton’s voice rose to a protesting whine. “Venables, you can’t do that, you can’t. You don’t realize my sufferings. It’s medicine. I must have it.” He was a pitiable sight as he bent forward pleading, his eyes fawning like a dog’s.
Charles was pitiless. He drew out the small square celluloid box and opened the lid. “H’m, with careful use this would last you a fortnight. And now you haven’t a grain.”
With an anguished whimper Winterton made a dive at it. Charles firmly shot him back into his chair.
“You beast,” whined the bald man.
; “Now look here, Winterton,” said Charles. “We’re going to get the truth from you for a change. You never saw Budge on the night of the murder, did you?”
“No,” said the other tonelessly.
“Budge afterwards came to you and pointed out his danger of arrest. No doubt he said it was absolutely false, but he explained to you that if he were arrested, your supply would cease. Like any other addict, you would damn body and soul for your regular shot of dope, and you agreed to repeat the false evidence he made you learn. Am I right?”
“Yes,” agreed the other, all fight gone. “What about it?”
“Well, Budge is locked up now. He’s confessed. Your source of supply is ended. But I’ll give you back your dope if you will sign a statement to the effect that Budge asked you to swear that you had seen him that night, and that without realizing the consequences of your action, you did so.”
“I’ll sign,” said the other, without hesitation. His mind was focussed absolutely on one object. He reached for his precious box.
“Not so fast,” replied Charles. “You’ll have to wait till I’ve seen Miss Mumby and got hold of Bray.”
Charles went out of the room. As he shut the door he saw Winterton, head bowed forward, fingers plucking nervously at the chair arms.
“Now for the lady. This will need somewhat more delicate handling, but I don’t think it will be very difficult.”
It wasn’t. Charles came out of Miss Mumby’s room with a satisfied smile and rang up Bray. Bray was listening to the expostulations of an infuriated Budge—infuriated not without reason, for all that afternoon had been spent with Superintendent Chelmsford. Words cannot paint the extraordinary denseness of Superintendent Chelmsford. Polite—in fact deferentially so—he had gone over every detail with which Budge was concerned, and seemed unable to grasp the simplest point without lengthy explanations. Laboriously, in longhand, with a scratchy nib, he wrote down everything. He insisted on Budge’s drawing a plan of the hotel, and then betrayed the greatest difficulty in following him.
Budge’s nerves eventually snapped under the strain at a time when even Chelmsford—a magnificent actor—was beginning to perspire slightly from the effort of maintaining an attitude of complete obtuseness. Budge refused to say another word until Bray had arrived, and he then passionately demanded of the Inspector whether he had not already given him all the information for which he was being badgered by Chelmsford.
At that moment the extension telephone in the sitting-room rang, and Charles was put through.
“Hello, Bray. All’s well. Come round at once. Budge can be turfed out now, but give yourself twenty minutes’ start.”
Bray had difficulty in keeping the elation out of his voice as he made a non-committal answer. He found it impossible to believe that Charles had succeeded where he had failed so uncompromisingly, but he was beginning to realize that his lanky junior had a certain natural flair which, for all his lack of training and technique, might avail him where Bray’s professional methods would prove useless.
He hurried into the yard and stepped into the Invicta in which Budge had arrived. “The Garden Hotel,” he said to the blue-capped constable at the wheel, “and don’t waste time.”
They plunged into the whirligig of Parliament Square and shot into St. James’s Park.
VI
Charles met Bray as he came in and took him to one side. “I’ve done what you wanted,” he said. “But you’ve got to promise me one thing. Don’t press Mumby or Winterton as to their motives for their tarradiddles. Stick simply to what you are interested in and turn a blind eye to everything else.”
Bray willingly agreed. His second examination of Miss Mumby and Winterton was very different from his first. Broken-spirited and nervous, they readily admitted that they had been prompted in their story by Budge. Bray did not endeavour to press his advantage. He listened to their absurd story without surprise and quickly drew up the statement which they signed. As Winterton affixed his name with trembling fingers, he looked inquiringly at Charles.
“I’ve put your Christmas presents back where I found them,” Charles said.
Pathetically eager, the two rose to their feet and hurried from the room.
“How on earth——” began Bray.
Charles laid his finger to his lips. “Hush,” he admonished him dramatically. “There are some things good little detectives should not know. I did it by a combination of blackmail, theft and threats with violence, and I think the less you know about it the better. As Al Capone would say: ‘Keep your nose clean.’”
Bray smiled. “Perhaps you’re right. I should hate to think what you’ve been up to, and I’m perfectly ready to believe it’s illegal. Anyway, we’ve got Budge sewn up now. I’ll see my boss at once and we shall have a warrant out for him to-morrow. Meanwhile, we’ll keep our eye on the hotel in case he tries to forestall us and make a getaway.
“Yes,” said Charles reflectively. “I think the next move is to arrest Budge.”
He got up and shook himself. “Well, I’ll be toddling. I’ve got to keep the story alive in the Mercury somehow. God knows what I can say to-day. Oh, how I wish I could put in the truth!”
Charles hesitated at the door. Then he turned. “Of course,” he said, “I’m more than ever certain that Budge is completely innocent.”
Before Bray could voice his astonishment the door had closed.
Chapter Thirteen
The Hangman is Anticipated
I
MISS SANCTUARY was knitting. She glanced up as Mr. Budge sat down beside her. The man was plainly agitated about something. “Badly frightened,” she thought to herself. She made no remark, however, and the steady click of her needles seemed to reassure him.
He tugged at his tie. “I feel I want some advice,” he said at last dryly, not looking at her. “I feel somehow that you could give me the advice I need.”
She smiled and took off her spectacles. “You are not the first to say so,” she said resignedly, putting them with her knitting in her work-basket. “O. Henry in one of his stories divides people into feet, hands and shoulders. I am afraid I am a shoulder, and to be candid, I rather like it. What is it?”
Budge seemed to have some difficulty in framing his thoughts. “Put it this way,” he said warily at last. “Assume a man suspected by the police in connection with this murder. He is innocent, but facts are against him. He believes the murderer must be a relative of a certain person who has a grudge against him.” Budge hesitated. “I don’t want to make myself out better than I am,” he said with an effort. “This grudge was justified in a way. It would definitely harm me if the police knew about it. Yet the only way I could put them on the track of the right person is by telling them the whole story.”
Miss Sanctuary was not a fool. She looked at Budge, and without her spectacles, he noticed she had very keen, blue eyes. “If you want my advice, you must be quite candid. Am I right in assuming that you were blackmailing these people and that this was the grudge you talk about?”
Budge wriggled. He had not expected this old lady to make so accurate an estimate of his character. Yet he felt better now that he had voiced the fear that was oppressing his mind. “Well, that’s not quite a fair way of putting it,” he hedged. “I admit they paid me something for keeping quiet.”
“Then in your place,” answered Miss Sanctuary, with some distaste, “I should take good care not to tell the police until it became absolutely necessary—in other words, until you are actually arrested.”
“You think that, do you?” answered the other, wincing at the word “arrested.” “That’s what I thought.” He looked round apprehensively. “Of course you won’t breathe a word to a soul of what I told you?”
“I am not in the habit of making capital of other people’s troubles,” she answered with a sarcasm that was wasted on him. “I shall not tell anyone else.”
When Miss Sanctuary was alone, she carefully replaced her spectacles and resumed her knitti
ng
“How extraordinary!” she remarked to one of Miss Mumby’s cats, which had been an indifferent auditor of the conversation.
II
“What precisely did you mean last night,” Bray asked Venables at eleven o’clock next day, “by saying you did not not believe Budge is guilty? You really are a most perplexing bloke. You spend a busy and probably extremely illegal afternoon breaking Budge’s alibi and then you tell me you think the fellow is an innocent lamb.”
“It is Budge’s alibi which for one thing makes me think he was innocent,” Charles replied. “We know it was manufactured hastily after the crime, and was full of weaknesses. Now I have a tremendous respect for the fellow’s intelligence, and I am quite sure that if he really had planned the murder, he would have arranged for a watertight alibi beforehand. He would never have risked the obvious possibility of the nurse seeing him coming away. The only thing that seems Budge-like is the neat and expeditious disposal of the remains, and I think we are both agreed there’s a curious story behind that in which Blood is involved.”
“Your reasoning is delightfully subtle,” Bray said, laughing. “But if we adopted it we should never get a conviction, because we should feel that all the obvious suspects would never have been such fools as to be suspected. A little more experience, Venables, and you will be amazed at the perpetual folly of criminals. It is a form of egoism which takes the shape of underrating the perception of other people.”
“Anyway, it’s all an academic matter,” answered Charles calmly. “If you arrest Budge, blue ruin will break out here, and out of the wreck we should be able to salve some evidence that will point to the true murderer.”
Crime in Kensington Page 14
