Hangmans Holiday (22 page)

“Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,” admitted the other man.

“Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,” objected Pender. “Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the
News of the World
intervened.”

“Yes,” said the other man, “but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elaboration, the lies, the paraphernalia. Absolutely unnecessary.”

“Oh come!” said Pender. “You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.”

“Ah!” said the other man. “You think that, do you?”

Pender waited for him to elaborate this remark, but nothing came of it. The man leaned back and smiled in his secret way at the roof of the carriage; he appeared to think the conversation not worth going on with. Pender, taking up his book again, found himself attracted by his companion’s hands. They were white and surprisingly long in the fingers. He watched them gently tapping upon their owner’s knee—then resolutely turned a page—then put the book down once more and said:

“Well, if it’s so easy, how would
you
set about committing a murder?”

“I?” repeated the man. The light on his glasses made his eyes quite blank to Pender, but his voice sounded gently amused. “That’s different;
I
should not have to think twice about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I happen to know how to do it.”

“Do you indeed?” muttered Pender, rebelliously.

“Oh, yes; there’s nothing in it.”

“How can you be sure? You haven’t tried, I suppose?”

“It isn’t a case of trying,” said the man. “There’s nothing tentative about my method. That’s just the beauty of it.”

“It’s easy to say that,” retorted Pender, “but what
is
this wonderful method?”

“You can’t expect me to tell you that, can you?” said the other man, bringing his eyes back to rest on Pender’s. “It might not be safe. You look harmless enough, but who could look more harmless than Crippen? Nobody is fit to be trusted with
absolute
control over other people’s lives.”

“Bosh!” exclaimed Pender. “I shouldn’t think of murdering anybody.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” said the other man, “if you really believed it was safe. So would anybody. Why are all these tremendous artificial barriers built up around murder by the Church and the law? Just because it’s everybody’s crime, and just as natural as breathing.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” cried Pender, warmly.

“You think so, do you? That’s what most people would say. But I wouldn’t trust ’em. Not with sulphate of thanatol to be bought for twopence at any chemist’s.”

“Sulphate of what?” asked Pender sharply.

“Ah! you think I’m giving something away. Well, it’s a mixture of that and one or two other things—all equally ordinary and cheap. For ninepence you could make up enough to poison the entire Cabinet—and even you would hardly call that a crime, would you? But of course one wouldn’t polish the whole lot off at once; it might look funny if they all died simultaneously in their baths.”

“Why in their baths?”

“That’s the way it would take them. It’s the action of the hot water that brings on the effect of the stuff, you see. Any time from a few hours to a few days after administration. It’s quite a simple chemical reaction and it couldn’t possibly be detected by analysis. It would just look like heart failure.”

Pender eyed him uneasily. He did not like the smile; it was not only derisive, it was smug, it was almost—gloating—triumphant! He could not quite put a name to it.

“You know,” pursued the man, thoughtfully pulling a pipe from his pocket and beginning to fill it, “it is very odd how often one seems to read of people being found dead in their baths. It must be a very common accident. Quite temptingly so. After all, there is a fascination about murder. The thing grows upon one—that is, I imagine it would, you know.”

“Very likely,” said Pender.

“Look at Palmer. Look at Gesina Gottfried. Look at Armstrong. No, I wouldn’t trust anybody with that formula—not even a virtuous young man like yourself.”

The long white fingers tamped the tobacco firmly into the bowl and struck a match.

“But how about you?” said Pender, irritated. (Nobody cares to be called a virtuous young man.) “If nobody is fit to be trusted—”

“I’m not, eh?” replied the man. “Well, that’s true, but it’s past praying for now, isn’t it? I know the thing and I can’t unknow it again. It’s unfortunate, but there it is. At any rate you have the comfort of knowing that nothing disagreeable is likely to happen to
me.
Dear me! Rugby already. I get out here. I have a little bit of business to do at Rugby.”

He rose and shook himself, buttoned his raincoat about him and pulled the shabby hat more firmly down above his enigmatic glasses. The train slowed down and stopped. With a brief good-night and a crooked smile the man stepped on to the platform. Pender watched him stride quickly away into the drizzle beyond the radius of the gaslight.

“Dotty or something,” said Pender, oddly relieved. “Thank goodness, I seem to be going to have the carriage to myself.”

He returned to
Murder at the Manse,
but his attention still kept wandering.

“What was the name of that stuff the fellow talked about?”

For the life of him he could not remember.

It was on the following afternoon that Pender saw the news-item. He had bought the
Standard
to read at lunch, and the word “Bath” caught his eye; otherwise he would probably have missed the paragraph altogether, for it was only a short one.

“WEALTHY MANUFACTURER DIES IN BATH

“WIFE’S TRAGIC DISCOVERY

“A distressing discovery was made early this morning by Mrs. John Brittlesea, wife of the well-known head of Brittlesea’s Engineering Works at Rugby. Finding that her husband, whom she had seen alive and well less than an hour previously, did not come down in time for his breakfast, she searched for him in the bathroom, where, on the door being broken down, the engineer was found lying dead in his bath, life having been extinct, according to the medical men, for half an hour. The cause of the death is pronounced to be heart failure. The deceased manufacturer …”

“That’s an odd coincidence,” said Pender. “At Rugby. I should think my unknown friend would be interested—if he is still there, doing his bit of business. I wonder what his business is, by the way.”

It is a very curious thing how, when once your attention is attracted to any particular set of circumstances, that set of circumstances seems to haunt you. You get appendicitis: immediately the newspapers are filled with paragraphs about statesmen suffering from appendicitis and victims dying of it; you learn that all your acquaintances have had it, or know friends who have had it, and either died of it, or recovered from it with more surprising and spectacular rapidity than yourself; you cannot open a popular magazine without seeing its cure mentioned as one of the triumphs of modern surgery, or dip into a scientific treatise without coming across a comparison of the vermiform appendix in men and monkeys. Probably these references to appendicitis are equally frequent at all times, but you only notice them when your mind is attuned to the subject. At any rate, it was in this way that Pender accounted to himself for the extraordinary frequency with which people seemed to die in their baths at this period.

The thing pursued him at every turn. Always the same sequence of events: the hot bath, the discovery of the corpse, the inquest; always the same medical opinion: heart failure following immersion in too-hot water. It began to seem to Pender that it was scarcely safe to enter a hot bath at all. He took to making his own bath cooler and cooler every day, until it almost ceased to be enjoyable.

He skimmed his paper each morning for headlines about baths before settling down to read the news; and was at once relieved and vaguely disappointed if a week passed without a hot-bath tragedy.

One of the sudden deaths that occurred in this way was that of a young and beautiful woman whose husband, an analytical chemist, had tried without success to divorce her a few months previously. The coroner displayed a tendency to suspect foul play, and put the husband through a severe cross-examination. There seemed, however, to be no getting behind the doctor’s evidence. Pender, brooding fancifully over the improbable possible, wished, as he did every day of the week, that he could remember the name of that drug the man in the train had mentioned.

Then came the excitement in Pender’s own neighbourhood. An old Mr. Skimmings, who lived alone with a housekeeper in a street just round the corner, was found dead in his bathroom. His heart had never been strong. The housekeeper told the milkman that she had always expected something of the sort to happen, for the old gentleman would always take his bath so hot. Pender went to the inquest.

The housekeeper gave her evidence. Mr. Skimmings had been the kindest of employers, and she was heartbroken at losing him. No, she had not been aware that Mr. Skimmings had left her a large sum of money, but it was just like his goodness of heart. The verdict was Death by Misadventure.

Pender, that evening, went out for his usual stroll with the dog. Some feeling of curiosity moved him to go round past the late Mr. Skimmings’s house. As he loitered by, glancing up at the blank windows, the garden-gate opened and a man came out. In the light of a street lamp, Pender recognised him at once.

“Hullo!” he said.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the man. “Viewing the site of the tragedy, eh? What do
you
think about it all?”

“Oh, nothing very much,” said Pender. “I didn’t know him. Odd, our meeting again like this.”

“Yes, isn’t it? You live near here, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said Pender; and then wished he hadn’t. “Do you live in these parts too?”

“Me?” said the man. “Oh, no. I was only here on a little matter of business.”

“Last time we met,” said Pender, “you had business at Rugby.” They had fallen into step together, and were walking slowly down to the turning Pender had to take in order to reach his house.

“So I had,” agreed the other man. “My business takes me all over the country. I never know where I may be wanted next.”

“It was while you were at Rugby that old Brittlesea was found dead in his bath, wasn’t it?” remarked Pender carelessly.

“Yes. Funny thing, coincidence.” The man glanced up at him sideways through his glittering glasses. “Left all his money to his wife, didn’t he? She’s a rich woman now. Good-looking girl—a lot younger than he was.”

They were passing Pender’s gate. “Come in and have a drink,” said Pender, and again immediately regretted the impulse.

The man accepted, and they went into Pender’s bachelor study.

“Remarkable lot of these bath-deaths there have been lately, haven’t there?” observed Pender carelessly, as he splashed soda into the tumblers.

“You think it’s remarkable?” said the man, with his usual irritating trick of querying everything that was said to him. “Well, I don’t know. Perhaps it is. But it’s always a fairly common accident.”

“I suppose I’ve been taking more notice on account of that conversation we had in the train.” Pender laughed, a little self-consciously. “It just makes me wonder—you know how one does—whether anybody else had happened to hit on that drug you mentioned—what was its name?”

The man ignored the question.

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” he said. “I fancy I’m the only person who knows about that. I only stumbled on the thing by accident myself when I was looking for something else. I don’t imagine it could have been discovered simultaneously in so many parts of the country. But all these verdicts just show, don’t they, what a safe way it would be of getting rid of a person.”

“You’re a chemist, then?” asked Pender, catching at the one phrase which seemed to promise information.

“Oh, I’m a bit of everything. Sort of general utility-man. I do a good bit of studying on my own, too. You’ve got one or two interesting books here, I see.”

Pender was flattered. For a man in his position—he had been in a bank until he came into that little bit of money—he felt that he had improved his mind to some purpose, and he knew that his collection of modern first editions would be worth money some day. He went over to the glass-fronted bookcase and pulled out a volume or two to show his visitor.

The man displayed intelligence, and presently joined him in front of the shelves.

“These, I take it, represent your personal tastes?” He took down a volume of Henry James and glanced at the flyleaf. “That your name? E. Pender?”

Pender admitted that it was. “You have the advantage of me,” he added.

“Oh! I am one of the great Smith clan,” said the other with a laugh, “and work for my bread. You seem to be very nicely fixed here.”

Pender explained about the clerkship and the legacy.

“Very nice, isn’t it?” said Smith. “Not married? No. You’re one of the lucky ones. Not likely to be needing any sulphate of … any useful drugs in the near future. And you never will, if you stick to what you’ve got and keep off women and speculation.”

He smiled up sideways at Pender. Now that his hat was off, Pender saw that he had a quantity of closely curled grey hair, which made him look older than he had appeared in the railway carriage.

“No, I shan’t be coming to you for assistance yet awhile,” said Pender, laughing. “Besides, how should I find you if I wanted you?”

“You wouldn’t have to,” said Smith.
“I
should find
you.
There’s never any difficulty about that.” He grinned, oddly. “Well, I’d better be getting on. Thank you for your hospitality. I don’t expect we shall meet again—but we may, of course. Things work out so queerly, don’t they?”

When he had gone, Pender returned to his own armchair. He took up his glass of whisky, which stood there nearly full.

“Funny!” he said to himself. “I don’t remember pouring that out. I suppose I got interested and did it mechanically.” He emptied his glass slowly, thinking about Smith.