by Clara Benson
‘Does the library door lock?’
Tatty shook her head.
‘That’s why Doug came up here, of course,’ said Gertie. ‘He wanted to do it in private.’
‘Did he know there was a bolt on this door?’ said Freddy, addressing Tatty.
‘I dare say he did. He’d been here often enough in the old days,’ she replied.
‘Hmm,’ said Freddy. He rattled the door a little. The bolt stayed fastened. ‘Doesn’t come loose.’
‘No. We tried that night, don’t you remember? That’s why you had to go in through the window.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know why you’re paying so much attention to that door,’ said Gertie. ‘It’s perfectly obvious that the window is the key to it all. Why, anyone might have come along the fire escape and got in that evening. You did yourself.’
‘True. But I did it by levering the catch up with a penknife from the outside. If someone did the same thing, then how did they get out and fasten the window again?’
Gertie lifted the catch.
‘It’s pretty loose,’ she said.
She threw open the window, ducked under the sash and vaulted lightly over the window-sill onto the iron balcony, then shut the window again. Freddy and Tatty watched as she rattled the sash and banged the window frame near the catch. After some effort, it fell partly back into place. She motioned at them to let her in again.
‘You see? That’s how they did it!’ she said triumphantly, once she was back in the room. ‘The killer came in through the window, killed Doug, then escaped the same way. Or he needn’t have come in through the window at all—he might just as easily have arrived through the door and bolted it from the inside before he did the deed.’
‘It’s a pretty theory,’ said Freddy, ‘but there are one or two objections. The first is that you made the most awful racket just then. If that’s how your imaginary murderer did it, then he would certainly have been noticed banging on the window to fasten it, given that there were dozens of people milling about in the garden and on the balcony at various times. The second is that I’m afraid I loosened that catch myself when I went in that evening. When I tried it, it was quite stiff, and it took me a good few minutes to lever it up. One couldn’t possibly have fastened it again merely by giving the window a good whack.’
‘Oh, but that must be how it happened,’ said Gertie. ‘There must be something we’ve missed, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps.’ Freddy was eyeing the writing-desk. He went across to it and examined it. It had three or four pigeon-holes for correspondence, but all were empty, apart from one, which held a little stack of note-paper printed with Lady Browncliffe’s address. The top sheet of the blotter had been used, but only lightly. There were several notes scrawled around the edges, all clearly by Lady Browncliffe herself.
‘Why did he come all the way upstairs to kill himself but not write a note?’ said Freddy, almost to himself.
‘Because he didn’t kill himself,’ said Gertie. ‘That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.’
Freddy picked up the pen from the stand. It was tortoise-shell with a gold nib.
‘He couldn’t have written a note anyway—not unless he brought his own pen with him. Look.’
Gertie and Tatty came forward to see. The nib of the pen was bent and twisted and completely ruined.
‘I gave that to Mother for her birthday!’ exclaimed Tatty in dismay. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Freddy.
‘Did she tread on it by accident?’ suggested Gertie. ‘I’ve done that with pens before.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Freddy. ‘This has been bent, not squashed. It looks almost as though someone has been trying to lever something up with it.’
‘But what?’
Freddy shrugged, then replaced the pen and continued to gaze around the room. He went across to the window and moved the catch up and down to try it for himself. It was less stiff than it had been on the night of Douglas’s death.
‘I wonder why nobody heard the shot,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘The band were playing too loudly for anyone to hear anything, as I recall,’ said Gertie. ‘I was quite deafened.’
‘Yes, but still, even then one might have thought somebody in another part of the house—one of the servants, perhaps—would hear it. It’s a pity too, because it means nobody knows at exactly what time he died. Didn’t the coroner say you were the last person to see him alive, Tatty?’
‘Yes, after he interrupted Father’s speech and I took him away for our private conversation. Although I’m not sure how private it was, now that I come to think of it,’ she added.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I rather suspected at the time that somebody had overheard us. We were in the smoking-room—that’s what we call it, at any rate, but nobody goes in there to smoke, as it’s at the front of the house and pretty cold and dark most of the time, so I knew we could be alone there. There’s a sort of ante-room leading to it that’s used for coats, and while Doug and I were talking I heard the floor outside creak, and I thought someone must have come in for their coat, so I shut the door so as not to be overheard. Then Doug went out and I waited, because it was nice and cool in the smoking-room and I wanted to have a cigarette and think in peace for a few minutes. Whoever it was in the cloak-room had gone by the time I came out, but I wonder whether they mightn’t have seen Doug as he passed through. If they did, then they’d have presumably been the last person to see him alive, not me.’
‘Any idea who it was?’
‘No—that is—’ she sighed. ‘I was a little frightened at the time that it might have been Tom. He was standing in the hall talking to Father when I came out, and he gave me a terribly frosty look—or at least, I thought he did. Afterwards I told myself I was just feeling guilty about what I’d done, or that perhaps he’d seen Douglas coming out just before me and wasn’t happy that we’d been talking alone together. At any rate, he never brought it up, even when we were rowing later, so I can only assume he didn’t hear what was said.’
‘What time was it?’
‘It must have been just after ten, I think.’
‘And nobody’s known to have seen Douglas after that,’ said Freddy. ‘We found him at half past one, so that’s three and a half hours in which it could have happened—or rather less, I should say, because the band had stopped playing and most people were leaving or had left by midnight, and the house was a lot quieter, so someone would have likely heard the shot if it had happened later than that. Yes, I think we can safely assume it happened during the party. Now, what—?’
He gazed around the room again, trying to cast his mind back to the night of the dance and how the room had looked then, when he had come in through the window and found Douglas’s body. Something seemed different, although he could not think what it might be. He frowned, racking his brains, then at last gave it up.
‘I don’t think there’s anything else to see here,’ he said. ‘It all seems straightforward enough. Shall we leave this room to its memories?’
They went out and downstairs, and found that Lady Browncliffe had just arrived home.
‘Mother, what happened to your pen?’ said Tatty.
‘Why, what do you mean, dear? Which pen?’
‘The one I got you for your birthday. You know, the tortoise-shell one. It’s broken.’
‘Broken?’
‘Yes. The nib’s all bent and twisted.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Lady Browncliffe. ‘How did that happen?’
‘I don’t know. We just found it in your dressing-room like that, in its stand.’
‘In my dressing-room? Oh, of course. I wondered why I hadn’t seen it lately. I must have forgotten to bring it out when we shut the room up. Can it be mended, do you think?’
‘It’ll need a new nib, at the very least,’ said Tatty.
‘Oh dear,’ said her mother. ‘I’m su
re the servants have been in that room, gawping. Terribly ghoulish, really, but people will be curious. I dare say somebody broke it while they were looking around. One of them snapped a tooth off my silver comb, too.’
‘What’s that?’ said Freddy.
‘I had everything brought out of there after Douglas died, you see. I’m not the sensitive sort, as a rule, but I couldn’t quite bear to sit and preen in front of a glass, knowing what had happened there. But someone must have broken the comb when they brought it out—either Sally or Mabel, I suppose, although they both denied it. Anyway, I must have a word with Whitcomb about the damage. It really is too careless of them.’
‘Might I see the comb?’ said Freddy.
‘If you like,’ said Lady Browncliffe. ‘Tatty, fetch it for me, would you?’
The comb was brought, and Freddy took it and examined it. It was the decorative sort for holding back a lady’s hair, in delicate silver with only two prongs—or rather one, since the other had been snapped clean off. Lady Browncliffe regarded it mournfully.
‘Your father brought it back from Paris,’ she said. ‘I was very fond of it. I do wish people would be more careful.’
There seemed nothing else to see, so they took their leave, and Tatty went to show them out.
‘By the way,’ she hissed to Freddy, as Gertie went on ahead. ‘You’d better not get any ideas.’
‘About what?’ said Freddy in surprise.
‘You know. Just because you caught me unawares at the dance, don’t think it meant anything. And you’d better not tell anybody.’
‘I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to,’ said Freddy politely. ‘I regret to say I’d had a few too many cocktails that evening, and I don’t remember much about it. Did I tread on your foot while we were dancing? I’m awfully sorry.’
‘Good. Just you make sure you don’t do any inconvenient remembering,’ she said sharply. Then her manner changed, and she sighed. ‘What do you think about Douglas? Am I making something out of nothing? I’ve wondered and wondered whether it mightn’t just be the guilt making me act. One doesn’t like to think one might be responsible for someone else’s death.’
‘My dear girl, you’re not responsible for what Douglas did,’ he said. ‘He was a grown man, and if he wanted to kill himself there’s nothing you could have done to stop him.’
‘But do you think he did kill himself?’
‘I haven’t seen anything yet to make me think he didn’t,’ said Freddy slowly.
‘I was afraid you’d say that,’ she said, and gave him a sad little smile.
Chapter Seven
Gertie had a theatre engagement, so Freddy saw her into a taxi and she went off, still proclaiming that her theory was correct. Freddy was unconvinced, but he had promised to look into it, and so he went back to his rooms on Fleet Street and read through the notes he had taken at the inquest into Douglas Westray’s death. There was not much to look at. Douglas had died at some time between ten o’clock and half past one on the evening of Thursday the 19th of June, and the cause of death was a bullet in his right temple. There were no other injuries to the body. The deceased was found in a room that was bolted from the inside, and was known to have been in a depressed state of mind on the evening in question, so the coroner had had no hesitation in recommending that a verdict of suicide be brought. It seemed clear enough that that was what had happened, and Freddy set little store by the idea that Douglas had not been in a mind to kill himself. He had certainly appeared depressed enough when Freddy had met him, and although Gertie and Tatty must have known Douglas better than Freddy had, he saw no reason to look beyond the obvious solution. Gertie’s story that Douglas had found out something scandalous Freddy dismissed as being the product of her inaccurate recollections of that evening.
For the rest of the week he forgot about the matter, and went about his business as usual. On Saturday afternoon, however, he received a telephone-call from his father, to say had he remembered it was his mother’s birthday tomorrow and that he was supposed to be coming to dinner? Freddy had, as he did every year, forgotten both of those things, and so he dashed out to Harrods to purchase a gift. Having completed his errand, he was just deciding to return home when he bumped into someone he knew. It was Lois Westray, accompanied by her step-daughter Alida Westray. Salutations were exchanged, and after some discussion they decided to go for tea in the Georgian restaurant.
‘I say, I’m dreadfully sorry about Douglas,’ said Freddy, once they had been seated.
‘Yes, it has been rather horrid,’ said Lois. Alida nodded in agreement. Her face looked a little drawn.
‘Poor Father,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t say much, but he’s taken it very badly.’
‘And what about you?’ said Freddy. ‘Are you all right?’
She gave a wan smile.
‘I shall be, but one feels so helpless. If there were only something one could have done.’
Lois said:
‘We had no idea he was so depressed. Of course, he’d had a few reversals lately, but they weren’t anything that any normal young person couldn’t have got over. He was only twenty-six, and had plenty of things to look forward to. It all seems such a terrible waste.’
‘I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet,’ said Alida. ‘I can’t help thinking that he’s going to walk through the door just as he used to. But he won’t, will he?’
Freddy shook his head sympathetically.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘And it’s not just the death one has to get over,’ said Lois. ‘It’s all the little irritations that go with it. Writing to the bank, and organizing the funeral, and replying to letters of condolence—that sort of thing. You’d think we didn’t have enough to worry about, without everything else going wrong as well.’
‘Why? What else has gone wrong?’
‘Oh, just little things. Nothing important, but on top of all the other stuff it’s horribly annoying. The police sent the wrong shoes back with Douglas’s clothes, so we need to give these ones back and get the right ones. Lots of little things like that.’
‘And his office at the factory was burgled too,’ added Alida.
Freddy pricked up his ears.
‘Burgled?’
‘Well, not exactly burgled,’ said Lois. ‘Stanley says someone broke open his drawer. I assume it was a petty thief who got into the building when nobody was looking.’
‘Was anything taken?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Alida. ‘It doesn’t seem so. It’s not as if he kept any money in there anyway.’
‘But it’s the kind of thing that gets Stanley terribly worked up,’ said Lois. ‘He sacked the porter, who was always letting people in when he oughtn’t, and sent notes around to everyone telling them to be vigilant. I suppose it helps him—he’s the sort of man who gets over things by keeping busy.’
‘Look here,’ said Freddy. I don’t suppose anybody has suggested to you that it might have been anything other than suicide?’
The two women glanced at one another.
‘Tatty said something of the sort,’ said Alida at last.
‘Tatty’s upset about Doug’s death, as we all are, and she’s not thinking straight,’ said Lois. ‘Why? Has anyone else said anything about it?’
Freddy did not answer directly.
‘It has been suggested that there may have been foul play,’ he said carefully.
‘You mean somebody killed him?’ said Alida.
‘Perhaps. I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘But he locked himself in,’ said Lois.
‘Yes, but it has been pointed out that since I got in through the window on the night I found him, someone else might have got in before me and escaped that way.’
They looked at him, open-mouthed.
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Lois at last. ‘Why, someone would have seen them, surely. Whoever it was would have had to come out along the fire escape and down the stairs, but peopl
e were up and down those stairs all evening. I know I was.’
‘Did you see anybody?’ said Freddy.
Lois blinked.
‘Why, I—no, not that I remember. Did you go up there, Alida?’
‘Yes,’ said Alida. ‘I went up there with Father. We both wanted a breath of fresh air, although there wasn’t much of it there. That was early in the evening, before supper.’
‘Do you remember seeing anyone else go up onto the balcony?’ said Freddy. ‘I mean to say, I don’t suppose you spent the evening staring at the thing, but we were all in the garden for supper.’
They both thought.
‘Lord Browncliffe, I think,’ said Alida. ‘And Tom and Tatty went up there as well.’
‘When was that?’ said Freddy.
‘After supper. I remember thinking they both looked rather grim. It was after Doug had made an exhibition of himself during Lord Browncliffe’s speech, and I assumed they’d gone up there to have it out.’
That agreed with what Tatty had told him. She had gone with Douglas into the smoking-room, and afterwards had had a row with Tom about Douglas’s behaviour during Lord Browncliffe’s speech.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘If you like I’ll see about getting Douglas’s shoes back for you. I’m in and out of police stations all the time in my job, so it won’t be any trouble.’
‘Oh, would you?’ said Lois. ‘I’d be awfully grateful. It will be one less thing to worry about, at least.’
So it was agreed, and soon afterwards they parted. Freddy decided that there was no time like the present, and since Scotland Yard was on his way home, more or less, he alighted there and asked to see Sergeant Bird. As it happened Sergeant Bird was in the office that afternoon, and was disposed to see him.
‘Do you have any new information for us?’ he said, when Freddy explained why he had come.
‘No. I just wondered if I might have a look at the medical report. I don’t suppose there’s anything to find out, but I promised I’d look into it for a friend, so look into it I must.’
