The Mad Hatter Mystery

by The Mad Hatter Mystery (retail) (epub)

  “Not much, I’m afraid, sir. I’ve just questioned the guards from the White Tower, and the head workman from the repair shop. Mr. Dalrye has the notes in shorthand.”

  The young man shuffled some papers and blinked at General Mason. He was still rather pale. And instinctively Rampole liked this Robert Dalrye. He had a long, rather doleful face, but a humorous mouth. His sandy hair bristled at all angles, apparently from a tendency to run his hand through it. His good-humored, rather near-sighted gray eyes were bitter; he fumbled with a pair of pince-nez on a chain, and then stared down at his papers.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said to Sir William. “They told me you were here. I—I can’t say anything, can I? You know how I feel.”

  Then, still staring at his papers, he changed the subject with a rush. “I have the notes here, sir,” he told General Mason. “Nothing has been stolen from the armory, of course. And the head workman at the shop, as well as both warders from the second floor of the White Tower, are willing to swear that crossbow bolt is not in the collection and never has been in any collection here.”

  “Why? You can’t positively identify a thing like that, can you?”

  “John Brownlow got rather technical about it. And he’s by way of being an authority, sir. It’s here. He says—” Dalrye adjusted his pince-nez and blinked—“he says it’s a much earlier type of bolt than any we have here. That is, judging from what he can see of it—in the body. Late fourteenth-century pattern. Ah, here we are. ‘The later ones are much shorter and thicker, and with a broader barb at the head. That one’s so thin it wouldn’t fit smoothly in the groove of any crossbow in the lot.’”

  General Mason turned to Hadley, who was carefully removing his overcoat. “You’re in charge now. So ask any questions you like. Give that chair to the chief inspector. But I think that proves it wasn’t fired, unless you believe the murderer brought his own bow. Then it couldn’t have been shot from one of the crossbows here, Dalrye?”

  “Brownlow says it could have been, but that there would be a hundred-to-one chance of the bolt going wild.”

  Mason nodded, and regarded the chief inspector with tight-lipped satisfaction. Rampole saw him for the first time in full light. He had removed his soggy hat and water-proof, and flung them on a bench; evidently there was about him none of that fussiness which is associated with the brass hat. Now he stood warming his hands at the fire, and peering round his shoulder at Hadley: a straight, thick-set figure, rather bald, with ginger mustache and imperial, and a pair of hard, unwinking eyes.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What’s the first step now?”

  Dalrye put down his papers on the table.

  “I think you’d better know,” he said, speaking between Mason and Sir William. “There are two people here among the visitors who are certain to have an interest in this. They’re over with the others in the Warders’ Hall. I wish you’d give me instructions, sir. Mrs. Bitton has been raising the devil ever since—”

  “Who?” demanded Sir William. He had been staring at the fire, and he lifted his head suddenly.

  “Mrs. Lester Bitton. As I say, she’s been—”

  Sir William rumpled his white pompadour and looked blankly at Mason. “My sister-in-law— What on earth would she be doing here?”

  Hadley had sat down at the desk, and was arranging notebook, pencil, and flashlight in a line with the utmost precision. He glanced up in mild interest.

  “Ah,” he said, “I’m glad to hear it. It centers our efforts, so to speak. But don’t trouble her for the moment, Mr. Dalrye; we can see her presently.” He folded his hands and contemplated Sir William, a wrinkle between his brows. “Why does it surprise you that Mrs. Lester Bitton should be here?”

  “Why, you know—” Sir William began in some perplexity, and broke off. “No. As a matter of fact, you don’t know her, do you? Well, she’s of the sporting type; you’ll see. I say, did you tell her about—about Philip, Bob?” He spoke hesitantly.

  “I had to,” Dalrye answered, grimly.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said I was mad. Among other things.”

  Hadley had picked up his pencil, and seemed intent on boring a hole in the desk top with its point. He asked, “And the second person among the visitors, Mr. Dalrye?”

  The other frowned. “It’s a Mr. Arbor, Inspector. Julius Arbor. He’s rather famous as a book-collector, and I believe he’s stopping at Sir William’s house.”

  Sir William raised his head. His eyes grew sharp again, for the first time since he had heard the news of the murder; it was curiously as though the color had come back into them, like color into a pale face. His narrow shoulders were a trifle raised, and now they squared.

  He said, “Interesting. Damned interesting.” And he walked over with a springy step to sit down in a chair near the desk.

  “That’s better,” approved the chief inspector, laying down his pencil. “But for the moment we shan’t trouble Mr. Arbor, either. I should like to get the complete story of Mr. Driscoll’s movements today. You said something, General, about a rather wild tale connected with it.”

  General Mason turned from the fire.

  “Mr. Radburn,” he said to the chief warder, “will you send to the King’s House for Parker? Parker,” he explained, as the other left the room, “is my orderly and general handy-man. He’s been with me since the Boer War, and I know he’s absolutely reliable. Meantime, Dalrye, you might tell the chief inspector about the wild-goose chase?”

  Dalrye nodded. He looked suddenly older. Putting a hand over his eyes for a moment, he turned uncertainly to Hadley.

  “You see, Inspector,” he said, “I didn’t know what it meant then, and I don’t know now. Except that it was a frame-up of some sort against Phil. Do you mind if I sit down and smoke? Thanks.”

  His long legs were shaking a trifle as he lowered himself into a chair. He got out a cigarette, and Hadley struck a match for him.

  “Take your time, Mr. Dalrye,” said the chief inspector. “Sir William—excuse me—has told us you are his daughter’s fiancé. So I presume you knew young Driscoll well?”

  “Very well. I thought a hell of a lot of Phil,” Dalrye answered, quietly. He blinked as the smoke got into one eye. “And naturally this business isn’t pleasant. Well—you see, he had the idea that I was one of these intensely practical people who can find a way out of any difficulty. He was always getting into scrapes, and always coming to me to help him out of them. Now, I’m not that sort at all. But he was the brooding sort, and any small difficulty seemed like the end of the world; he’d stamp and rave, and swear it was insufferable. You have to understand all this to understand what I’m going to tell you.”

  “Difficulties?” repeated the chief inspector. He was sitting back in his chair, his eyes half closed, but he was looking at Sir William. “What sort of difficulties?”

  Dalrye hesitated. “Financial, as a rule. Nothing important. He’d run up bills, and things like that.”

  “Women?” asked Hadley, suddenly.

  “Oh, Lord! Don’t we all?” demanded the other, uncomfortably. “I mean to say—” He flushed. “Sorry. But nothing important there, either; I know that. He was always ringing me up in the middle of the night to say he’d met some girl at a dance who was the absolute One and Only. He would rave. It lasted about a month, generally.”

  “But nothing serious? Excuse me, Mr. Dalrye,” said the chief inspector, as the other waved his hand, “but I am looking for a motive for murder, you know. I have to ask such questions. So there was nothing serious?”

  “No.”

  “Please go on. You said that you helped him.”

  “I was flattered, I suppose. And I liked to feel I was—well, helping somebody close to Sheila. We all do, hang it. We like playing the all-wise director of destinies; the Olympian angle. Bah! Anyway, as I say, you’ve got to understand his nature to understand today.”

  For a moment Dalrye drew deeply on his cigarett
e.

  “He telephoned here early this morning, and Parker answered the telephone in the general’s study. I wasn’t up yet, as a matter of fact. He began talking rather incoherently, Parker says, and said they were to tell me he would be down here at the Tower at one o’clock sharp; that he was in bad trouble and needed help. In the middle of it I heard my name mentioned, and came out and talked to him myself.

  “I thought it was probably nothing at all, but to humor him I said I should be here. Though, I told him, I had to go out early in the afternoon.

  “You see, if it hadn’t been for that— As it happened, General Mason had asked me to take the touring-car up to a garage in Holborn and have the horn repaired. It’s an electric horn, and it got so that if you pressed it you couldn’t stop the thing’s blowing.”

  Hadley frowned. “A garage in Holborn? That’s rather unnecessarily out of the way, isn’t it?”

  Again a dull anger was at the back of Mason’s eyes. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, legs wide apart; he spoke curtly.

  “Quite right, sir. You see it in a moment. But it happens to be run by an old army man; a sergeant, by the way, who did me rather a good turn once. I have all my motor repair work done there.”

  “Ah,” said Hadley. “Well, Mr. Dalrye?”

  Rampole, leaning against a row of bookshelves with an unlighted cigarette in his fingers, tried again to imagine that all this was real; that he was really being drawn again into the dodges and terrors of a murder case. Undoubtedly it was true. But there was a difference between this affair and the murder of Martin Starberth. He was not, now, vitally concerned in its outcome. Through chance and courtesy he was allowed to be present merely as a witness, detached and unprejudiced, of the lighted playbox where lay a corpse in an opera hat.

  It was as bright as a play in the ancient room. There behind the desk sat the patient, watchful chief inspector, with his steel-wire hair and his clipped mustache, indolently folding his hands. On one side of him sat Sir William, his shrewdness glittering again behind impassive eyes; and on the other was the thin, wry-faced Robert Dalrye, staring at his cigarette. Still bristling, General Mason stood with his back to the fire. And in the largest chair over against the fireplace, Dr. Fell had spread himself out—and he was contemplating with an owlish and naive gaze the opera hat in his hands. He hardly lifted his eyes from the hat; he turned it over and over, wheezing. This taciturnity irritated Rampole. He was used to hearing the doctor roar with a sort of genial wrath, and trample down everybody’s opinions before him. No, it was unnatural; it worried the American.

  He became aware that Dalrye was speaking, and jerked his thoughts back.

  “. . . so I didn’t think much more about it. That was all, until somewhere about one o’clock, the time Phil said he would be here. The phone rang again, and Parker answered it. It was Phil, asking for me. At least,” said Dalrye, squashing out his cigarette suddenly, “it sounded like Phil. I was in the record room at the time, working on the notes for the general’s book, and Parker transferred the call. Phil was more chaotic than he had been in the morning. He said that, for a reason he couldn’t explain over the phone, he couldn’t come to the Tower, but that I had got to come to his flat and see him. He used his old phrase—I’d heard it dozens of times before—that it was a matter of life or death.

  “I was annoyed. I said I had work to do, and I damned well wouldn’t do it, and that if he wanted to see me he could come down here. Then he swore it really was a matter of life or death. And he said I had to come to Town, anyway; his flat was in Bloomsbury, and I had to take the car to a garage which wasn’t very far away; it wouldn’t be out of my way if I dropped in. That was perfectly true. I couldn’t very well see a way out of it. So I agreed. I even promised to start at once.”

  Dalrye shifted in his chair. “I’ll admit—well, it did sound more convincing than the other times. I thought he might really have got himself into a genuine mess this time. So I went.”

  “Had you any definite reason to believe this?”

  “N-no. Yes. Well, make of it what you like.” Dalrye’s gaze strayed across to the corner, where Dr. Fell was still examining the top hat with absorbed interest. Dalrye shifted uneasily. “You see, Phil had been in rather high spirits recently. That was why I was so surprised at this change of front. He had been making a play with his stories on this hat thief thing—you know?”

  “We have good reason to know,” the inspector said. His look had suddenly become one of veiled interest. “Go on, please.”

  “It was the sort of story he could do admirably. He’d been free-lancing, and he hoped the editor might give him a permanent column. So, as I say, I was astonished when I heard him say what he did. And I remember, I said, ‘What’s the row, anyway? I thought you were following the hat thief.’ And he said, ‘That’s just it,’ in a sort of queer, horrible voice. ‘I’ve followed it too far. I’ve stirred up something, and it’s got me.’”

  Rampole felt a stab of something like fear. From Dalrye’s description it was easy to picture the dapper, volatile Driscoll, white-faced, talking wildly into the telephone. The chief inspector leaned forward.

  “Yes?” he prompted. “You gathered that Driscoll thought he was in danger from this hat thief; is that it?”

  “Something like that. Naturally, I joked about it. I remember asking, ‘What’s the matter; are you afraid he’ll steal your hat?’ And he said—”

  “Well?”

  “‘It’s not my hat I’m worried about. It’s my head.’”

  There was a long silence. Then Hadley spoke almost casually. “So you left the Tower to go to his place. What then?”

  “Now comes the odd part of it. I drove up to the garage; it’s in Dane Street, High Holborn. The mechanic was busy on a job at the moment. He said he could fix the horn in a few minutes, but I should have to wait until he finished with the car he was working on. So I decided to walk to the flat, and pick up the car later. There was no hurry.”

  Hadley reached for his notebook. “The address of the flat?”

  “Tavistock Chambers, 34, Tavistock Square, W.C. It’s number two, on the ground floor. Well, when I got there I rang at his door for a long time, and nobody answered. So I went in.”

  “The door was open?”

  “No. But I have a key. You see, the gates of the Tower of London are closed at ten o’clock sharp every night, and the King himself would have a time getting in after that. So, when I went to a theatre or a dance or something of the sort, I had to have a place to stay the night, and I usually stopped on the couch in Phil’s sitting room. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, I sat down to wait for him. I supposed he was at a pub or something. But the fact is—”

  Dalrye drew a long breath. He put the palm of his hand suddenly down on the table.

  “About fifteen minutes or so after I had left the Tower, Phil Driscoll appeared at the general’s quarters here and asked for me. Parker naturally said I had gone out in response to his phone message. Then, Parker says, Phil got as pale as death; he began to rave and call Parker mad. He had phoned that morning asking to see me at one o’clock. But he swore he had not changed the appointment. He swore he had never telephoned a second time at all.”

  V

  The Shadow by the Rail

  HADLEY STIFFENED. He laid down the pencil quietly, but there were tight muscles down the line of his jaw. It was silent in the stone room save for the crackle of the fire.

  “Just so,” he said, quietly, after a pause. “What then?”

  “I waited. It was getting foggier, and it had started to rain, and I got impatient. I was cursing Phil and everybody else. Then the phone in the flat rang, and I answered it.

  “It was Parker, telling me what I’ve just told you. He had called once before to get me, but I was at the garage and hadn’t arrived. Phil was waiting for me at the Tower, in a hell of a stew. Parker said he wasn’t drunk, and I thought somebody had gone mad. But there was nothing to do but return; I had
to do that, anyway. I hurried over to get the car, and when I was leaving the garage I met the general.”

  “You also,” inquired Hadley, glancing up, “were in town, General?”

  Mason was gloomily regarding his shoes. He looked up with a somewhat satiric expression.

  “It would seem so. I had a luncheon engagement, and afterwards I went to the British Museum to pick up some books they had for me. As Dalrye says, it began to rain, so of course there weren’t any taxis. And I hate traveling by tube or bus. No privacy. A man’s packed in with the herd. Bah! Then I remembered the car would probably be at Stapleman’s garage; or, if it weren’t, Stapleman would lend me a car to go back in. It’s not far away from the Museum, so I started out. And I saw Dalrye in the car, and hailed him. I’ve told you the rest of it. We got here at two-thirty, and found—him.”

  There was another long silence. Hadley was sitting forward with his elbows on the desk, rubbing his temples with heavy fingers. Then, from the corner, a curious, rumbling, thoughtful voice spoke.

  “Was it a very important luncheon engagement, General Mason?” asked Dr. Fell.

  The query was startling in its very naiveté, and they all turned to look at him. His round and ruddy face was sunk into his collar, the great white plumed mop of hair straggling over one ear, and Dr. Fell was staring through his glasses at the top hat in a weirdly cross-eyed fashion. He looked quite vacant.

  The general stared. “I don’t think I understand, sir.”

  “Was it by any chance,” pursued the doctor, still blankly, “a society of some sort, a board of directors’ meeting, a gathering of—”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mason, “it was.” He seemed puzzled, and his hard eyes grew brighter. “The Antiquarians’ Society. We meet for lunch on the first Monday of every month. I don’t like the crowd. Gaa-a! Sedentary fossils of the worst type. Hit ’em with a feather pillow, and they’d collapse. I only stay in the organization because you get the benefit of their knowledge on a doubtful question. I have to attend the lunch to stay in, but I leave as soon as I can. Sir Leonard Haldyne—the Keeper of the Jewels here—drove me up in his car at noon. He’s a soldier, and good company, and he feels as I do about it. But wait a bit. Why do you ask?”