Eight Murders In the Suburbs (11 page)

“About ten minutes later,” continued the superintendent, “you left the water and followed the course taken by your wife, expecting to find her waiting for you in the car? Your car was missing? You caught sight of the body of your wife lying close to where the car had been parked and partly concealed by a clump of ferns? You perceived that your wife was dead, and noticed marks on her throat suggesting to you that she had been strangled? You carried the body into the so-called wood and partly covered it with ferns, after which you waited in the road and, after a short lapse of time, stopped a motor cyclist and asked him to call the police? It is your belief that deceased was killed by the person or persons who stole the car?”

“I don't quite like ‘belief,' Superintendent. I think I said ‘guess.' What about making it ‘inference'?”

Presently his car was brought in by the Brighton police, who had found it in a side street. The police handed him his clothes and the note-case—which, as he had explained, was concealed on a special little shelf under the dash—but would not allow him to touch the car.

Beyond this, the police made no restrictions. There were no signs that the murder had been planned. The theory that a husband is the first suspect when a wife has been murdered was weakened by the theft of the car, which could not have been anticipated. Curwen took an afternoon train to London.

Curwen assessed his position much as a speculator might assess his own crash on the Stock Exchange. On a different Exchange, Curwen had crashed and now adjudged himself a moral bankrupt—a conception that held a ray of hope. A bankrupt could qualify for discharge and rebuild his credit. He would so live that, at the end of his life, he would have caused more happiness than unhappiness. He assumed, with honest indifference to his own peril, that it would be impossible to convict him. In London, he took the underground to Gormer's Green.

He told Mrs. Morprill that his wife had been murdered, giving her the version he had given the police. He spoke in tragic terms, without hypocrisy, because he saw the death of Morprill and the death of Marion as a single tragedy.

“There is a certain sameness in the way you and I have been treated by life,” he said. “In a little while, I hope you will feel as I do—that is, I hope we shall be seeing each other more frequently.”

The mild eyes looked troubled, as if they understood too much.

“I don't really know what to say to that, Mr. Curwen.” For the first time since he had known her, she was groping for words. “I think—I'm sure—I ought to confess that I haven't been quite straightforward with you. About my husband, I mean.”

He was badly startled.

“I simply can't imagine your being anything but straightforward,” he said.

“It was your kindness and all the things you've done for Maggie that sort of tied my hands. First, it was you never saying anything about Henry when I tried to coax you. Then, the last time you were here, I spoke about him being a tall man, and before you left, I spoke about him being a short man. And you won't mind my saying it now, Mr. Curwen, but I don't believe you know which he was. I don't believe you ever knew him.”

“Then you'll have to think up some reason why I should seek you out and tell you lies about my having a moral obligation to him.”

“Well, it couldn't have been anything Henry did for you, could it! And I never thought you were telling lies, Mr. Curwen.” She paused, then forced herself to continue: “When Maggie was thanking you for the bicycle, I watched you looking at her. And then I sort of caught you looking at me in the same way. It's because we stand for the same thing to you.”

“And you know why?”

When she answered she avoided his eye.

“I only want to say that I shall always think of you as a
good
man, Mr. Curwen. It's little enough to say, but I do hope it will be a help to you. And, please, we don't want you to give us any more things. I promise that, if I'm ever unable to look after Maggie, I'll ask your help, for Henry's sake. And—we'd better not see each other, though I do hope you won't think it's because I'm ungrateful or—or anything like that.”

In the underground, he tried to re-shape the theory of working for a discharge from moral bankruptcy. What could one do if one's mild-eyed creditors refused payment? He was still seeking the answer when he reached his flat, to find the local superintendent waiting outside the front door.

“On the back seat of your car,” said the superintendent, when they were inside the flat, “was a lady's swimming cap, wet on the inside, and a towel, part of which was damp. Analysis returns sea water in both cases. Do you agree that this points to deceased having entered the car before she was attacked?”

Curwen nodded. “Presumably, she was dragged from the car.”

From a brief case the superintendent produced two envelopes. The first contained a cracked purse-mirror, which he replaced as being unidentifiable. The second envelope contained a tortoiseshell comb, with sheath.

“Did you buy this comb at Hoffmeister's on the fourth of March last? And did you give it to your wife?”

“Yes, to both questions.”

“That comb was found close to the bench at the cliff-head, approximately one hundred and twenty yards from the spot where you told us you found the body. Don't say anything, please, until I've finished. We think that your wife went to the car, removed her swimming cap, towelled herself a little, then took that comb and mirror to the bench, no one molesting her. While she was on the bench waiting for you, the car was stolen—which she didn't know, unless you told her before you strangled her.”

“Good enough, Superintendent.” Curwen spoke absently. He was thinking, ‘I can beat that widow and child by making a will in their favour. If I don't die morally solvent, I shall at least have paid something into court.'

Before they started, the superintendent accepted a drink. On the way to the police station the two men became quite friendly. Curwen admitted that he had expected to escape detection.

“Speaking off the record,” said the superintendent, “your plan was okay, but you're not the right type. The man who stands the best chance on a job like this is the fussy sort, with an eye for small details that might cause trouble. You know? The chap who thumps the doors of a car to make sure they're properly shut. The chap who turns back to make sure he's switched the stove off—which he always has. Checks and double-checks everything. Gets on people's nerves.

“Take your case f'rinstance. We could never have charged you if you'd thought of going back to that bench to check—to
make sure
she hadn't dropped something that might give you away. See what I mean? Little things like that!”

Before sentencing James Bladlow to death, the judge—following a strange convention of our courts—explained to the prisoner how richly he deserved to be hanged. The crime, he asserted, was a sordid one without a single redeeming feature. From the moment Bladlow set eyes on Miss Henson—the judge did not doubt—he had planned to destroy her. He had enticed this elderly but inexperienced woman to occupy the top floor of his house. For four years, under the guise of friendship, he had systematically obtained control of her fortune. With diabolical cunning he had placed himself beyond reach of the law. But for a tangential accident, he would never have been brought to trial.

Thus did the judge make it all sound simple and straightforward. His law, of course, was impeccable, but his moralising was slovenly. If Bladlow had been as insensitive a scoundrel as all that, there would have been no ‘tangential accident.' The latter was a foreseeable consequence of his respect for the woman he murdered.

Detective Inspector Rason—without committing himself on the word ‘tangential'—certainly regarded his own success as pure luck—in the first instance. The luck drifted on to his table in the Department of Dead Ends in the form of a portrait in oils of a girl of ten. Attached was a label to the effect that the picture was a forgery of the work of an artist named Merthyr. This certainly led him to Bladlow—but not in connection with the murder.

James Bladlow, born in 1900—and bred in the stern tradition of middle-class respectability—was a house and estate agent. He had inherited a small business in West Kensington, founded by his grandfather, which was yielding a net income of about eight hundred pounds, with occasional windfalls—one of which had recently enabled him to open a small branch at Shaldon-on-Thames, some thirty miles out of London, where he lived.

In February, 1932, another windfall was impending in the form of instructions from the bank, as executors of Sir Anstruther Henson, recently deceased, to sell the latter's house and contents, together with five other houses in the neighbourhood. To his office a few days later came Miss Henson, daughter of deceased and sole beneficiary.

She was a meagre, pinched little woman of fifty-two, looking rather older than her age. Bladlow's first impression was that her dress, though new and of good material, was ill cut and old fashioned. Under her outmoded muff, her hands were twitching with shyness. When he addressed her by name and asked her to sit down she bowed like an Edwardian dowager. She sat upright in the visitors' armchair, her breathing laboured with embarrassment.

“I must confess, sir, that I have never before entered a business office, and I beg of you to bear with me.” The words sounded like a quotation from a Victorian novel, as indeed they were. The voice was equally startling, coming from the throat of a woman in her fifties. It was not a young voice—it was juvenile: it went on: “My father would, of course, disapprove. But—you don't mind, do you? It's nothing to you that he would disapprove, is it?”

While Bladlow reassured her and chattered a little, to help her, he noted that her face, now unquestionably plain, might have been attractive in youth. The wide-set, blue eyes were not stupid—they were, he thought, sensitive and vaguely pathetic.

Gradually she lost some of her nervousness and let him draw her out. In something less than twenty minutes he had learnt much about her, including the reason for her visit. He was able to infer that she had lived alone with her father all her life, for the greater part of which he had been a tyrannical invalid.

“Now about this sale, Miss Henson! I understand that you wish to withdraw the furniture of two of the rooms, including everything that was in the rooms—”

“Everything in the rooms was mine!” She had become bold enough now to interrupt him. “The rooms were mine. He never once came into them. He promised he would not come in—ever. And he always kept his word.”

Her nervous insistence revealed much of the atmosphere of her home life.

“I daresay that could be arranged. If you'll give me their name, I'll telephone the solicitors who are handling Sir Anstruther's affairs.”

“My father did not approve of lawyers. I suspect that he, too, knew little about business. Before he died he told me the bank would do everything.”

“Hm! Banks are heavily tied by the letter of the law. Never mind. You can ‘buy in' at the auction.” He explained that she would ultimately be paying the money to herself. She understood only one point.

“I haven't enough money,” she said. “There's a portrait by Merthyr—you will be aware that his standing has increased since his death.”

Bladlow had never heard of Merthyr. She explained, and astonished him again by her practical knowledge of art values. He gathered that the portrait might fetch a hundred guineas or more at auction.

“The best thing to do would be to ask your bank manager—”

“I have never had any dealings with a bank.” The juvenility of the voice was pronounced as she added: “But I've been saving my pocket money for years. Eighty-three pounds! I have it all in my muff, but it won't be enough.” And then: “Oh, do
please
help me!”

A shrivelled, middle-aged woman with the air of a child waiting for a grown-up to help her. Bladlow found it unnerving. So far from ‘planning to destroy her,' he planned to comfort her. He felt that quite deep emotion which some persons feel when a stray dog whines and cringes for food. It is the cringeing that is an unbearable indictment of one's humanity. This poor little old scarecrow ought not to have been possible.

It might be six months or more before probate could be granted for her father's will, which, after taxation, would bring her some thirty thousand pounds. Within a week the carpets would be taken from under her feet, by which time some pickpocket would probably have acquired her savings. She would be temporarily penniless and homeless—would think that everyone was going to be as cruel to her as her father had been.

“I'm glad you came to see me, Miss Henson—it wasn't such an ordeal after all, was it! I'll see that you get what you want. If you will come back to this office at four this afternoon I think you'll find, everything will have been settled.”

When she left him, he allowed himself to be momentarily overcome, even found it necessary to wipe his spectacles.

“That's a damned scandal if you like!” he told the enlarged photograph of his late father on the opposite wall. “A selfish swine battening on his daughter's vitality without even the excuse of poverty! What fun can that poor old thing have had in the whole of her life? And now she's too old to enjoy the money!”

He rang his wife. He presented the case, not from the angle of the stray dog, but from that of the substantial client in difficulties while awaiting probate.

“If you can't stand her, we'll push her along after a few days. But if you can, it'll probably mean a good deal of juicy business for us, one way and another.”

That speech was as sincere as the speech he made to his father's photograph. He expected to act as general agent for her and intended to charge full fees for his services, but on a scale sanctioned by trade custom.