Speedy Death (10 page)

‘Because I didn’t do it, sir.’

‘NO,’ SAID THE
Chief Constable, ‘I don’t think you did, Parsons. But somebody must have done it, and, if it wasn’t you, I wonder who the deuce it could have been? About that message, now. When did you receive it?’

‘Immediately after lunch, sir.’

‘Who from?’

‘From Miss Eleanor herself, sir. Her words, I think, were these: “Oh, you might just tell Mander that I’ve ordered more roses from William for this evening, Parsons.” (William being the head gardener, sir.) “He had better see about them at once.” Well, I forgot the message altogether, sir, but as I sat there waiting for Mr Mountjoy I recollected it, sir, and thought I might just have time to run downstairs and speak to Mander while Mr Mountjoy was drying himself.’

‘I see,’ said the Chief Constable musingly. ‘Thank you, Parsons. You have been of tremendous assistance.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ And the mild man closed the door noiselessly behind himself.

‘There goes an innocent manservant of impeccable bearing and behaviour, or one of the cleverest criminals unhung,’ said the Chief Constable thoughtfully. ‘And for the life of me I can’t tell which.’

‘You don’t mean that
you
think Mountjoy was murdered?’ gasped Alastair Bing, before anyone else could speak. The Chief Constable gazed at him in surprise.

‘I haven’t the slightest doubt of it,’ he answered quietly. ‘And I shall make it my business to see that a correct verdict is returned by the coroner’s jury. The whole matter must be very thoroughly investigated, gentlemen.’

‘I would stake my life on Parsons’ innocence,’ declared Carstairs firmly. ‘He is no murderer.’

‘Murder is a queer crime,’ the Chief Constable said musingly. ‘I’ve known cases——’ He paused, and allowed his eyes to travel down the page of notes he had been making.

‘Crime committed before seven-thirty,’ he read. ‘Yes, that is your dinner-hour, I think you said, and Mountjoy was the only person who was not accounted for, was she not? At what time did Mountjoy enter the bathroom? Does either of you gentlemen know?’

‘Yes,’ answered Carstairs. ‘It would have been at ten minutes to seven. I asked Parsons that question yesterday, and he was quite certain on the point.’

‘Good! Well, now, gentlemen, you see the big difficulty, don’t you?’

‘Motive,’ said Carstairs succinctly.

‘Exactly. An adequate motive, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will hang a man. Now, who in this house had such a strong motive for wishing Mountjoy out of the way that he went to the length of murdering her?’

‘But just a minute, Sir Joseph!’ cried Dr Brenner. ‘Aren’t you going a little too fast? I can’t see that it is established beyond doubt that it was somebody in this house. Might it not equally have been some enemy of the dead woman, who perhaps had tracked her here? I know every person in this house reasonably well, and I assure you that I cannot imagine one of them being capable of committing a horrible crime.’

‘I sympathize with your feelings, sir, and with your objections,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘but consider the facts. If we accept the evidence of that manservant, Parsons, which at present, in order to form a working hypothesis, we are compelled to do, the facts are these: Some person or persons knew the ways of the house sufficiently well, not only to make a beautifully timed entry into the bathroom where the unfortunate woman was (this house contains more than one bathroom, Brenner, you remember, and yet the murderer picked out the one habitually used by the deceased), but also to seize the few minutes that the valet was absent from his post to walk safely out of the said bathroom——’

‘Carrying the soiled bathroom stool,’ interrupted Carstairs. ‘He, she, or they then walked up a flight of stairs, deposited the soiled stool in the next-floor bathroom, and——’

‘This is the first I’ve heard of this,’ cried the Chief Constable. ‘Are you sure? Just give me the facts again, slowly.’

‘I can’t prove it,’ replied Carstairs, ‘but I’m sure it happened.’ And he recounted his conversation with Mrs Bradley and his subsequent discovery that one of the bathroom stools had recently been cleaned.

‘Hum! Very interesting, that. Miss Bing, you say, restored the stool to the first-floor bathroom?’

‘Yes. But, of course, that doesn’t necessarily connect her with the crime, does it?’

‘Oh, surely not,’ laughed the Chief Constable, while Alastair Bing, at the mention of his daughter’s name in such a connection, bristled angrily and showed signs of bursting into loud explosions of indignation.

‘Of course,’ Sir Joseph continued soothingly, ‘Miss Bing, as a good housekeeper, would supervise the arrangement of the furnishings, and would see that anything soiled or marked was immediately cleaned. But we need not go into that at present. There are just one or two little points I want cleared up. The first one is to ascertain which persons in the house (including the servants) definitely can be acquitted of suspicion. I’m afraid I must trouble you to have them up one by one for this purpose, Bing. The servants first.’

The examination of the domestic staff and the testing of their several alibis did not take very long. The Chief Constable, firm but tactful, encouraging the timid and keeping the loquacious within the bounds of the inquiry, established without a doubt the fact that between the most extreme points of time in which the crime could have been committed all were engaged in their several duties, and could produce two or more witnesses to prove it. Even the man Parsons was able to find a first ally in Dorothy Clark, who had seen him waiting about for Mountjoy on the threshold of the bedroom, a second one in Mrs Bradley’s maid, who had been sent down on to the next floor to see if her mistress had dropped a lace handkerchief on the stairs, and, in addition, the valet’s story of his going to the butler to tell him about the flowers received ample confirmation from that functionary, and also from the knife and boot boy, who had (he now confessed with tears) jeered at Parsons as he passed by the pantry on his way to the kitchen.

‘So that’s that,’ said the Chief Constable, slapping his note-book down on the table with an air of finality. ‘And now, Bing, for the more delicate operation of interviewing your guests and family.’

Alastair rang the bell, and moodily resumed his seat.

‘I’ll step outside, shall I?’ said Carstairs obligingly.

‘If you will be so kind.’

When he had gone, the Chief Constable turned in a businesslike manner to Bing.

‘Well, now, Bing,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Where were you between the hours of six-fifty and seven-twenty-five on the evening of August the thirteenth? I have to ask you as a matter of form, you know.’

Alastair Bing pursed his lips and frowned.

‘I suppose I was in my room, dressing for dinner,’ he said.

‘Do you know anybody who will bear witness to that?’

‘Why, no. Of course not,’ replied Alastair testily. ‘I don’t have the whole household in my bedroom to watch me dress for dinner.’

‘By heavens, Brenner,’ said the Chief Constable, slapping his knee, ‘some intelligence has been used here!’

‘You’re right, Sir Joseph,’ replied the doctor, with faint enthusiasm. ‘A clever job.’

‘You see the point, don’t you, Bing?’ the Chief Constable went on, turning again to Alastair.

‘What?’ said Alastair shortly.

‘Well,’ Sir Joseph good-humouredly explained, ‘I expect nearly everybody will be in the same boat as yourself.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Everybody was dressing for dinner. Nobody, probably, will be able to produce what I should call a water-tight alibi. See?’

‘That’s very interesting,’ said Alastair Bing heavily.

‘And now, can I trouble you to send in Mr Carstairs?’ Sir Joseph went on.

Alastair walked out, and Carstairs took his place.

‘Of course I haven’t an alibi,’ he laughed, before the Chief Constable could frame the question. ‘Incidentally, we were all a bit late for dinner—all the men, I mean. The ladies managed as usual, of course.’

‘You mean?’

‘I mean Mountjoy was occupying that bathroom all the time. The rest of us had to make shift as best we could.’

‘Ah, yes. Of course. Did none of you knock on the door, or do anything to attract her attention?’

‘I couldn’t say. I made a dive for the top-floor bathroom when I found the other was still occupied, and was lucky enough to grab it. Oh, Bertie Philipson met me coming out of it, but heaven knows what the time was. I just fell into my clothes and made a dash for it. Philipson was even later down than I was.’

‘You mean, you might have had time to commit the murder and
then
go upstairs to the other bathroom?’

‘Oh, yes, easily, I should imagine,’ replied Carstairs cheerfully. ‘But then, so would Philipson,’ he added, laughingly.

‘I know,’ said Sir Joseph gloomily. ‘That’s just the difficulty. Nobody will have a complete alibi, unless one of the ladies happens to have had her maid with her all the time.’

This proved to be so in the case of Mrs Bradley, who was the very last person to be interviewed.

‘Well, I suppose I can cross you off my list of suspects,’ said the Chief Constable, smiling at her.

‘Oh, don’t do that, Sir Joseph!’ cried Mrs Bradley kittenishly. ‘I shall feel so lonely if you do. Besides, Mr Carstairs picked me out as the murderer.’

The Chief Constable laughed, closed his notebook, and rose.

‘Well, I’ve seen everybody now, I take it,’ he said.

Having all been interviewed, the entire house-party and family were by this time gathered together in the study, and they all laughed and told him there were no more victims.

‘Then,’ he said, ‘I must go, for all sorts of formalities have to be complied with. But don’t imagine you’ve got rid of me altogether. I shall come again.’

He turned to Alastair Bing.

‘We shall, of course, apply for an adjournment of the inquest after the formal evidence of identification and so on has been taken,’ he said. ‘Good-bye, Bing, I am terribly sorry this has happened. I’ll make it my business to see that nobody is harassed more than is absolutely necessary, of course, but we must get to the bottom of the beastly business, whatever happens. Good-bye, and cheer up as much as you can.’

With which last friendly injunction, he drove away.

Carstairs joined Mrs Bradley in the garden.

‘You haven’t forgotten the cliff walk you promised to show me, have you?’ she asked him.

Carstairs looked at her quizzically, and she laughed.

‘Yes, that’s it. You have guessed the guilty secret. I want to talk to you. And we daren’t talk here.’

‘No. Here comes young Philipson already,’ said Carstairs, smiling at the young man as he came towards them over the beautiful, springy turf.

‘I say, I feel all of a dither,’ said Bertie, joining them. ‘These little diversions may be all right for those of strong moral fibre, but my delicate constitution won’t stand much more of it.’

‘Of what?’ asked Mrs Bradley. ‘You don’t mean that a young healthy male animal is upset because he’s had to tell a policeman at what time during the evening of August the thirteenth he put his clean shirt on, and who saw him do it?’

‘It’s all very well to rot me, Mrs Bradley,’ said Bertie, in an affectedly injured tone, ‘but it
is
upsetting and unnerving to a sensitive nature like mine.’

‘Well, you didn’t give yourself away,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘Nobody thinks you did it.’

‘I say, though——’ Bertie’s voice dropped, and he gave a cautious glance towards the verandah, where, sprawled in attitudes of ease, sat Garde and Dorothy. Their attention, however, was entirely engaged, so Bertie withdrew his gaze from the charming picture of their utter absorption in one another’s conversation, and continued:

‘I’d like to tell you people something, and then perhaps you’ll advise me whether to tell that policeman Johnnie, or whether it is unimportant.’

Mrs Bradley and Carstairs looked as interested as they felt.

‘Yes?’ breathed Mrs Bradley.

‘Well, it’s only this——’ Bertie gave another stealthy glance around him. ‘You know what a devil of a time Mountjoy was in that bathroom?’

‘Yes,’ said Carstairs.

‘Well, I waited and waited, you know, thinking every minute that he—she I mean—would emerge, until at last I got so fed up that I went and twisted at the handle of the door to hurry him up a bit.’

‘Her,’ said Mrs Bradley, under her breath.

‘Yes, her. Well, do you know, I swear the door was locked then. The handle turned, but nothing else happened. I only shoved cautiously, of course, in case the place was still occupied, and then somebody inside squeaked out, “Don’t come in!” Just like that. High-pitched, you know, and nervous. Well, of course I yelled, “Sorry!” and came away, and it was after that I met you, Mr Carstairs, on the floor above, coming out of the other bathroom.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ said Carstairs. ‘But I don’t quite see why you’ve told us your little yarn. Naturally, if Mountjoy was in the bath, she would shout to you not to enter the room, wouldn’t she?’

‘It wasn’t Mountjoy’s voice,’ said Bertie quietly.