Death-Watch (16 page)

“The day, Henrietta,” Mrs. Steffins broke in, eagerly, forgetting her past tears, “the day I told you of, you remember, that dear Horace—”

“Day of the ’orrible murder,” said Kitty, with relish. “Oo-er!”

A harassed chief inspector finally extracted the information. On that day, between five and half-past, both Kitty and Mrs. Gorson had taken tea downstairs with a Miss Barber, who worked next door. Kitty had taken up tea to Mrs. Steffins and Carver at half-past four, had gone up again at a little past five with more hot water; and had removed the cloth at half-past six. Hadley made a last note.

“There’s somebody you may have seen at the ‘Duchess of Portsmouth’; you may even have talked to him. This man is here tonight … Betts!” called Hadley, who evidently did not intend to face more hysterics. “Take them to see Ames, and then get anything they may like to say. That’s all—thank you.”

When they had gone, Hadley glared round again.

“You all understand it now. Somebody in this house accused one of five women of being the thief who killed that shop-walker in Gamridge’s. One of you has been accused of murder; can you get that clear? Well? I’ll give the accuser a last chance to speak up now. Who was it?”

Silence.

“Who saw a woman burning a pair of bloodstained gloves? Who saw a turquoise bracelet and a stolen watch in the possession of one of you?”

He struck his knuckles sharply on the table, and it roused them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eleanor cried. “This is the first
I’ve
heard of it. And I certainly didn’t kill anybody at that store. If I had, do you think I’d have been fool enough to admit I’d been there?”

After her first apparent fright, Mrs. Steffins had been considering. “Isn’t it fortunate,” she murmured, with cold sweetness, “that you know where I was all afternoon on the anniversary of Horace’s funeral? This is really outrageous!”

“And I also plead not guilty,” Lucia put in, with a mocking grin. “Don’t worry; I’ll produce that alibi … All that bothers me is the liar who made a remark like that, if somebody did accuse one of us and you’re not pulling our legs.”

Hadley said, gently: “You’ll give us permission, then, to make a thorough search of your rooms? Now?”

“With pleasure,” replied Lucia.

“I’m sure I don’t mind,” said Eleanor, sniffing a little. “Search as much as you like, but mind you put everything back where it was.” Mrs. Steffins sat up. “I’ll allow nothing of the kind!” she cried, and her eyes grew smeary again. “You’ll search over my dead body. I’ll scream. I’ll yell for the p—I’ll carry it to the Home Office, I’ll see that every one of you gets the sack, if you dare have the insufferable—oh, my nerves! Oh, can’t you let a poor … Besides, aah! You know I didn’t do it. You know where I was. So what reason can you have for wishing to search my room?”

Wearily Hadley got to his feet.

“That’s all for the moment,” he said, and waved his hand. “We shall have to leave it there for tonight. The body is being removed now, and you may go to bed if you like.”

But the damage was done in that last suggestion of suspicion; the air, already poisoned in this household, had grown so tense that they seemed reluctant to go. Mrs. Steffins waited for Eleanor, and Eleanor waited for Mrs. Steffins, until Hadley said, “Yes, what else?” and they both hurried out. Lucia Handreth alone preserved a callous cheerfulness. At the door she looked back over her shoulder.

“Well, good luck, Mr. Hadley,” she nodded. “If you’re going to search my digs I hope you’ll be quick about it. I want to turn in. Good night.”

The latch clicked. It was for a time the end of the strain. Melson sat down drowsily, and the room felt cold.

“Fell,” said Hadley, “I must be losing my grip. I have a suspicion that so far I’ve bungled this thing badly. The murderer’s here; the murderer’s under this roof, and within reach of me at this minute. They’re all here.
Which one of them is it
?”

Dr. Fell did not speak. He had propped an elbow on the crook of his cane, and his chin in his big hand. The ribbon on his eyeglasses fluttered in a draught that blew through the white room, but it was the only sign of motion. Faintly, with the curtness of finality, the bell at Lincoln’s Inn tolled half-past three.

F
RIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH, WAS COOL
and autumnal. The landlady tapped on Melson’s door at the usual hour of eight o’clock, and brought in his breakfast without more than the usual comment on the weather. Although she must have been aware of last night’s disturbance, she did not connect her lodger with the events next door. On his own part, being secretly inclined to worry about his health, his surprise that he felt bright and refreshed after only four hours’ sleep induced in him a rather swashbuckling mood.

He was forty-two; in the history department of his college he was second only to the internationally famous scholar who was at the head of it; he had a good home, he worked with intelligent people, and nothing roused his wrath except the expounders of the “Theory of Teaching.” Well, then? Smoking his first after-breakfast pipe by the open window, he found himself smiling in that obscure fashion which, he suspected, merely meant to his students in History 3a (“The Monarchical Prerogative and Its Opponents in English Constitutional History from the Civil Wars to the Accession of William III”) that old Melson was going to crack one of his mystifying jokes, and to get ready for it.

He frowned, glancing across at his image in the mirror of the wardrobe. “A sort of incurious Sherlock Holmes,” Fell had said. Well—he had himself to blame for that slight standoffishness, although he wasn’t standoffish at all. In his earlier days he had thought it was necessary. If you got too much of a reputation as a
raconteur
and good fellow, you might be popular, but the authorities were not inclined to take you seriously. This stiffness was now so established a part of his reputation that he never dared use, in his lectures, the fireworks or unconventionalities of more spectacular faculty-members. Secretly he would like to have done it. But he had only cut loose once. It was a lecture on Cromwell, and he had flayed that old villain all over the classroom with a sudden richness of oratory and drama whose reception disconcerted him. The class had taken it first in dazed silence, and then with discreet mirth. Subsequent rumours about it made him uncomfortable for the rest of the semester. His dry cough returned to him; he never tried it again.

Gideon Fell, now—that was different. To Fell this sort of thing was as frankincense and gunpowder. Melson remembered the two semesters in which Dr. Fell had been guest-lecturer from England, and the most uproariously popular figure who ever disrupted the campus. He remembered Fell’s roaring chuckle, the massive gesture with which he singled out a student to argue, his trick of hurling his notes about when excited; he remembered Fell’s famous five lectures on “The Effect of Kings’ Mistresses on Constitutional Government,” or that equally famous one in the Queen Anne series, which began abruptly and thunderously:
“Flew now the eagles of bloody Churchill, black in honour and war, on to an ever-glorious damnation
!”—and lifted the class straight from their seats at the end of the battle of Oudenarde.

Now he was again in a criminal case. As many years as he had known Fell, Melson had never seen him at work on any of these puzzles. One of Melson’s honour students, to whom he had introduced the doctor, had told Melson of the Chatterham Prison case
¹
and only a month ago the newspapers had been full of the Depping murder near Bristol. This time Melson had stumbled into it. Chief Inspector Hadley had intimated that he would not object to Melson’s presence, and, if he could pacify his own conscience about neglecting Bishop Burnet’s History, he meant to follow it up.

Damn Burnet, who was always dashing off to Scotland when you wanted him to stay in England. Melson looked over at the littered writing-table: he felt a sense of freedom in damning Burnet. It suddenly seemed to him that he might be making too much of Burnet after all. Fell had invited him round to the rooms the doctor usually rented in Great Russell Street during his fits of work at the British Museum on materials for his great work,
The Drinking Customs of England from the Earliest Days.
He had said to come for breakfast, if Melson could manage it, or any time that was convenient. Well, then—

Melson picked up his hat and hurried downstairs.

He glanced at No. 16 as he passed, quickly and with a sense of guilt. Its white pillars and red-brick sedateness looked different in the morning light, so remote from terrible events that he half expected to see Kitty sweeping the steps with the utmost composure. But the blinds were drawn and nothing stirred there. Refusing to put his mind to the puzzle, Melson turned off into the rattling traffic of Holborn, and ten minutes later he was ascending in the creaky lift of the Dickens Hotel nearly opposite the British Museum. From behind Dr. Fell’s door came the sounds of violent argument, so he knew Hadley was already there.

Swathed in a bathrobe of lurid colours, Dr. Fell sat placidly disposing of one of the largest breakfasts Melson had ever seen, in a room littered with books. Hadley, jingling keys in his pockets, stared moodily out of the window at the crowd of idlers already accumulating at the gates of the Museum.

“For a man who lives at Croydon,” Melson said, “you’re on the job remarkably early.”

Hadley was bitter. “What was left of the night after half-past five,” he said, “I spent at the Yard. That obese blighter you see shovelling down the bacon and eggs ran away and left me to do all the dirty work. If that’s coffee you’re pouring out for me, make it good and strong.”

“I wanted to think,” replied Dr. Fell, placidly. “If the process is unknown to you, you might at least tell me what you did. I’m like you last night: I want the facts and not grousing. What happened?”

Hadley passed a cup of coffee to Melson and took one himself. “Well, we searched the rooms of every woman in that house, for one thing. We found nothing. But neither Hamper nor myself is much of an expert at that, so it doesn’t mean much. However, I’ve a chap at the Yard who’s first rate at the business; and I’m going to rush him round there this morning. Those ladies are watching one another so closely that, if one of them
has
got something concealed, she won’t have a chance to get rid of it without being seen. All the same—”

“You searched Madame Steffins’ room as well?”

“Yes, finally. The others cut up such an unholy row that I think it scared her. She exploded into tears, said to go ahead, and finally asked me why I didn’t cut her throat. I have since been wondering why … And d’you know the reason for the row? She had a couple of pornographic books stuck away in the bottom of the bureau drawer. I pretended not to notice ’em and everything went more smoothly afterwards.”

“Any trouble from Mrs. Gorson and the maid?”

Hadley grunted. “Not so far as searching their stuff was concerned. The girl was rather a problem after she discovered murder had been committed, but Mrs. Gorson calmed her down. I like that woman, Fell; she’s all right … except that she kept on going in that ghost-story way of hers, with a lot of philosophical remarks about life and death. If anything, she gave me too much cooperation in the search. She dug up all her old theatrical photographs, and showed me at least a trunkful of poetry she’d written, with side remarks on the iniquity of publishers. It seems she wrote a three-volume novel and sent it to the biggest firm in London; and after rejecting it they basely pinched the plot and wrote it up themselves, which was proved because the heroine’s name was the same as in hers, and it sold a million copies … I tell you, I felt my brain giving way.”

He drew a deep breath, jingled the keys moodily, and added: “By the way, there was just one queer thing about Mrs. Steffins’ belongings that I forgot to tell you. I don’t suppose it means anything, but after all that commotion about the gilt paint—”

“Hey?” said Dr. Fell, looking at him curiously.

“I looked at the paint-tubes she’s been working with. The gilt one was squashed nearly flat on the end towards the mouth, as though she or somebody else had accidentally leaned one hand on it. You know, the way you do sometimes with a tube of toothpaste, and it spurts out? She denied having done it, and said the tube was intact when she last used it …” At this point in the recital Dr. Fell stopped with a loaded fork halfway to his mouth, and his eyes narrowed. Hadley went on:

“Anyway, it makes no difference. The paint we found traces of in the washbowl, and the paint on the hand of the clock, are altogether different. Sergeant Hamper—he started life as a house-painter, and claims to be an authority—swore to it last night. And I’ve had confirmation this morning; one’s an oil, and one’s an enamel. So that’s washed out. But Steffins carried on about it for the rest of the night. Deliver me,” said Hadley, violently, “from any more cases where there are too many women concerned! To conclude the night pleasantly, I had trouble with Stanley; but at least it was somebody I knew how to deal with.”

Dr. Fell laid down his knife and fork. “What about Stanley?”

“Watson said he was laid out with nervous shock and wasn’t responsible. So I was the goat. I took him home to Hampstead in a cab. After all, damn it,” Hadley protested, uncomfortably, “he was once a member of the Force, and it was war service that did for him. Besides, I had to question him, whether I liked it or not. But did he appreciate it? Not half! If you call it appreciation. He turned nasty, refused to answer questions, began raving against the Force. Finally he tried to fight, and I had to land him one on the jaw and put him to sleep until I could get him home to his sister.” Hadley made a gesture of distaste, drained his coffee cup, and sat down. “It was broad daylight by the time I got back to the Yard, and I hope somebody appreciates it.”

“Yes, you had rather a night,” admitted Dr. Fell, with absentminded encouragement. He leaned back from the table with an expiring sigh of satisfaction, fished up his old black pipe from a pocket of the lurid dressing-gown, and beamed on the chief inspector. “I imagine it would be an insult to ask you whether you’ve learned anything more since then?”