Duplicate Death (29 page)

"You promised!" panted Cynthia.

"Yes, I know I did, and I'll keep it, if I can. But you've got to pull up, and maybe it won't be easy, not at first. And if you didn't pull up - well, then, it wouldn't rest with me any longer, but you'd wake up to find yourself in a Home, undergoing the sort of treatment you wouldn't like at all, with a prosecution looming on top of that!"

The warning frightened Cynthia so much that she only cowered in her chair. Hemingway then left her, and, encountering Miss Pickhill on the landing, took her into the boudoir, and embarked on an extremely trying half-hour with her. However, after running the gamut of shock, horror, revulsion and condemnation, the good lady dissolved into tears, saying into a large linen handkerchief: "I blame my sister! Anyone could have seen with half an eye the child was never robust, and what did she do but drag her from party to party? Over and over again did I tell her that she was heading for trouble, and now we see how right I was! If I have to devote the rest of my life to her, I shall cure her! No principles, of course! Brought up in that Godless way! It doesn't bear thinking of!"

"Och, I am sorry for the lassie!" said Grant, as they passed out of the house.

"Well, I'm not!" said Hemingway. "A proper little detrimental, that's what she is, and she's getting off lightly! Sandy, what we've discovered this morning is nobody's business! Haven't I told you, time and again, that when a case gets properly gummed up something'll break?"

"You have," agreed the Inspector gravely. "Now, I have not had the opportunity to look at that fan you gave me. What is it you have in your head?"

"You'll see!" Hemingway said. "We're going to do a little experiment with that fan and a bit of wire, my lad!"

"Ah!" said the Inspector. "I thought it would be that, maybe." He added, with a half-smile: "You have always believed it was Mrs. Haddington murdered Seaton-Carew, have you not?"

"I never believe anything until I get proof," replied Hemingway. "But what I've got is flair!"

"I have heard you say so," meekly responded his subordinate.

The experiment, conducted in the Chief Inspector's room, with a length of wire and Mrs. Haddington's fan, caused the cautious Gael to say: 'Gle mhath! I do not doubt it was the fan she used for her tourniquet. That -" he pointed to where Cynthia's compact lay - "gives us the motive, which before we never had. But what possessed that man to give snow to a bit lassie like yon?"

Hemingway shrugged. "I daresay we shall never know. My guess is that he fell heavily for her, and she wasn't having any. He didn't give her much of the stuff — just enough to make her dependent on him. May have meant to break her of it, once he had her where he wanted her; may not have cared, as long as he did have her. You ought to know what effect the stuff would be likely to have! Only he reckoned without her mother. Now, you may think Miss Pickhill's nothing more than a pain in the neck, but that's because you haven't got flair! I got a lot of very valuable information out of Miss Pickhill, and the most important was that the late Mrs. Haddington pretty well doted on that daughter of hers. All right! Nobody knew better, if you were to ask me, than Mrs. Haddington what becomes of people who get the drug habit. Don't you run away with the idea that she was a plaster-saint! She wasn't! She knew what Seaton-Carew's little racket was, and cashed in on it! She knew the signs all right, and I'd be willing to stake a month's pay she spotted them in the fair Cynthia! It wouldn't surprise me if I had proof given me - which I shan't have, the way things are — that she'd made up her mind to eliminate the boy-friend long before that party of hers." He paused. "No, I'm wrong there. Didn't that silly girl say she only lost the compact on the day of the party? All the same, Mrs. Haddington may have had her suspicions before that. Why else did she pinch the compact? For what we can't doubt she did! She found what she was looking for, and she knew there was only one thing to be done: wipe out Seaton-Carew!

And she was longheaded enough to see that she couldn't have a better opportunity than at her own Bridge-party! I daresay she got the idea as soon as he told her he was expecting a 'phone-call. She was clever enough to have staged that, I daresay, but maybe she didn't. Lots of other ways of getting him away from the rest of the party. As for the wire, I always did think it must have been she who took it out of the cloakroom. Whether she did that only to tidy the place, which seems likely; or whether she did it with the murder in her mind is another of the things we shall never know. Bit of both, perhaps."

"It is possible," Grant said. "But if it was she who killed Seaton-Carew, who was it who killed her? And why?"

Chapter Nineteen

"There," said the Chief Inspector frankly, "you have me, Sandy! Nice set-out, isn't it? First we get Mrs. Haddington planning as neat a murder as you could wish for; and then we have someone unknown taking careful note of her methods, and coolly copying them to do her in! Banking on us thinking the same person was responsible for both deaths, which we might have if I hadn't found that fan, and you hadn't known the trick of that compact. We got motive and means in one fell swoop, as you might say, which is a piece of bad luck for Murderer No. 2. On the face of it, it looks a bit as if this bird was fitted out with a water-tight alibi for the first murder."

"That would rule out Poulton," said Grant.

"It would, of course, and we haven't reached the stage of ruling him out, not by a long chalk. What we've got to discover was what possible motive he can have had for wanting to dispose of Mrs. Haddington good and quick. If he thought it was she who was giving his wife cocaine, I suppose he might have done it. You'd think, though, that a level-headed chap like him would have wanted some solid proof before committing a pretty nasty murder, let alone the foolhardiness of it!"

"They say in the City that he is verra canny. It might be that he would bank on us believing he would not be so silly as to have done it."

"Yes, I always heard you Highlanders were an imaginative lot," commented Hemingway. "I'm bound to say I've never seen any signs of it in you before, and, if that's a sample, I hope I never will again! If Poulton committed the second murder, he wasn't banking on me getting any cockeyed ideas into my head, you can bet your life on that! What's more, he must have had a damned good reason for doing it. It might be the one I've already suggested, and the more I think about that the less it appeals to me; it might be that Mrs. Haddington knew of Lady Nest's habits - which I don't doubt — and was threatening exposure. If so, why?"

"Not exposure: blackmail!"

"Yes, that's a possibility. He's a very wealthy man: she may have over-reached herself. I shouldn't think he'd part readily with any substantial sum. On the other hand, supposing she did demand a young fortune from him, and he'd come to us? What would we have done?"

"We would have kept his name out, as far as was possible, but these things sometimes leak out, sir, and well you know it!"

Hemingway nodded, but pursed his lips rather dubiously. "You may be right. All the same - Well, we'll see! Meanwhile, as soon as we've had a bit of lunch, we'll pay Dr Westruther another call. He's got some explaining to do. He wasn't looking altogether happy at the Inquest this morning, and I'm sure I don't blame him. Sailing very near the wind, is Dr Westruther."

When they met again, it was nearly three o'clock, and the Inspector was able to report that his enquiries had elicited the fact that Mr.. Godfrey Poulton was a passenger on the aeroplane due at Northolt at about four o'clock.

"Good!" said Hemingway. "This time, perhaps I can get him to be a little more open with me than he was before."

"You saw the doctor, sir?"

"I did. From his face, I should say he'd just as soon a polecat had walked in as me. Luckily I've never been one to set much store by popularity, otherwise my feelings might have been hurt. As it was, I was rather glad to see I wasn't a welcome guest. It encouraged me to be a bit unconventional with him. He's a slippery customer, but he doesn't like this case. Talked the usual stuff about his duty to his patients, but when I pointed out to him that when we'd had two murders he was carrying that a bit far, he turned a very nasty colour. What he says, and, I don't doubt, would swear to, is that he never connected Seaton-Carew's death with the drug-traffic. Says he wasn't told who'd given snow to the Haddington girl. Well, that's quite likely, but I think he put two and two together. What's shaken him is Mrs. Haddington's death. It's in the cheaper papers, but he says he only sees The Times. Came as a shock to him. Sat there goggling at me like a hake. He hadn't a clue, that I'm sure of. She did call him in to prescribe for the girl, and she told him the plain truth. You'll probably like to know that he doesn't think there's been any irremediable harm done. As regards Lady Nest, he was a good deal less forthcoming, but I didn't press him too hard on that. If Poulton goes on stone-walling, I've got enough evidence now to force him to disclose the address of the Home he's put his wife in. Did I tell you I'd had a crack with Heathcote? He and Cathercott are hot on their trail, and just about as pleased as punch with themselves. Heathcote even spared me a pat on the back, but two chaps less interested in a brace of murders you'd never find! I'm going to have a talk with the AC now. You nip down to Northolt, and catch Poulton as he steps out of the 'plane! Bring him here - all nice, and civil: wanted for further enquiries. Tell him there have been developments which make it necessary for me to ask him a few more questions, and watch his reactions. There won't be any, so that won't take you long!"

It was nearly five o'clock when Inspector Grant ushered Godfrey Poulton into the Chief Inspector's room. Mr.. Poulton appeared to be quite unperturbed, merely saying: "Good afternoon! I understand you want to ask me some more questions, Chief Inspector? I have no wish, of course, to impede the course of justice, but I should be glad if you would come to the point as quickly as possible! I'm expected at my office."

"Good afternoon, sir. I shan't keep you longer than I need. It really depends on you," said Hemingway. "Will you sit down?"

Mr.. Poulton seated himself without hesitation in a deep, leather-covered armchair. He did not seem to be in any way embarrassed by the necessity, thus imposed on him, of being obliged to look up to meet the Chief Inspector's eyes. He merely glanced at his wrist-watch, and said: "Well, what is it?"

"I think, sir, that you visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday afternoon?"

"I did, yes."

"Rather less than half an hour after your departure, sir," said Hemingway unemotionally, "Mrs. Haddington was discovered dead in her boudoir. Strangled with a piece of wire," he added.

"What." ejaculated Poulton, stiffening suddenly, in a way which made Inspector Grant think that the news camee as a shock to him, but which only caused his superior, one of the pillars of an Amateur Dramatic Society, to consider that the exclamation had been wellrehearsed.

"Yes, sir," he said phlegmatically.

"Good God!" Poulton paused. His eyes, under their level brows, lifted to the Chief Inspector's face. "I see. I can only tell you that when I left Mrs. Haddington she was alive, standing before the electric fire in her boudoir. She had just rung the bell, to summon her butler to show me out."

"Did you wait for the butler to appear, sir?"

"No. I took my leave of Mrs. Haddington, and left the room. The butler reached the hall as I was coming down the half-flight of stairs from Mrs. Haddington's sittingroom."

"And what, sir, was your reason for paying this call?"

Silence followed this question. Poulton was frowningly studying his finger-tips. After a moment he again looked up. "Yes, I see. You are bound to ask me that. I shall make no secret of the fact that my call was not of a friendly nature. Mrs. Haddington had been ringing up my house to ask for news of my wife: I went to Charles Street to inform her that my wife was unwell, and that it was my fixed intention to put an end to the intimacy that had hitherto flourished between them."

"Yes, sir? And why was that your fixed intention?"

"I did not care for the connaissance."

"That, sir, is not quite a good enough answer."

Poulton smiled faintly. "I suppose not. Very well, Chief Inspector! I see that I must rely upon your discretion. Before she married me, my wife was one of the more prominent members of a set which prided itself on its total disregard for accepted conventions. I do not propose to divulge any of her indiscretions to you, but I will say, between these walls, that there had been indiscretions. By some means, unknown to me, Mrs. Haddington had been put in possession of the details of perhaps the most serious of these. The price of her silence was not money, but sponsorship into the class of Society to which my wife holds the key."

"And when, sir, did you discover this?"

"Not, unfortunately, at the time."

"No, sir. Only after Seaton-Carewzs murder, in fact?"

"Recently," amended Poulton.

"Mr.. Poulton, I hope you mean to stop fencing with me. I know a lot more than I did two days ago, and you may believe me when I say that I know beyond doubt that Lady Nest is now in a Home, being cured of the drug-habit. I also know that it was Seaton-Carew who supplied her with cocaine."

He encountered a glance as keen and as searching as a surgeon's scalpel. "Have you proof of that?"

"I have proof that cocaine was found in Seaton-Carew's flat; I have proof that Lady Nest was not his only victim."

"I see." Poulton was silent for a moment. "I was never sure, myself. I suspected him, but no more."

Hemingway waited. After a pause, he said: "Was this the hold Mrs. Haddington had over your wife, sir?"

"No."

"When did you discover that Lady Nest was an - was taking the stuff, sir?"

"After Seaton-Carew's murder, and your visit to my house. How much of what I say to you do you propose to make public property?"

"That will depend on circumstances, sir."

Poulton smiled faintly. "I understand you. I did not murder Mrs. Haddington, so I must hope that "circumstance" will not arise. Seaton-Carew's death came as an appalling shock to my wife. Under the stress of'- considerable emotion - she was induced to confide in me. I should add that her nerves have never been robust, and that I did not suspect what you have discovered until an old friend of mine, who is an eminent physician, met her in my house, and - confided to me his suspicion. When the source of her supply was murdered and it seemed probable that you would discover what that source was, I was able to persuade her to go into a Home."

"You knew it was Seaton-Carew?"

"Only on Tuesday night, after his death."

"Did Lady Nest also divulge to you that she had been blackmailed by Mrs. Haddington?"

"She did." Poulton looked steadily at Hemingway. "I visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday to inform her that I was in full possession of all the facts of that old scandal, and that I should have no hesitation, in certain eventualities, in placing the matter in the hands of the police. There was no conceivable reason why I should have murdered her, nor did I do so. I have no more to say than that."

"At what hour did you leave Charles Street, sir?"

"At a quarter-to-seven. I was keeping my eye on the time, for I had a 'plane to catch."

"So far as you know, there was no other visitor on the premises?"

"I saw no one. Mrs. Haddington led me into the room she calls her boudoir. No one was present but ourselves."

"Thank you, sir. I won't keep you any longer now," said Hemingway.

The Inspector, having shown Poulton out, said: "Och, you have let him go, but he is a canny one!"

"I can pick him up any time I want to," Hemingway replied shortly. "I want those two lengths of wire, Sandy! Send down for them!"