The Ginger Cat Mystery (12 page)

“Father used to have the duplicate keys when he regularly used the music room. He returned them to Uncle John when uncle bought him a piano for the bungalow and he has never to my knowledge been in the Manor since.”

“You have no idea what became of them subsequently?” asked Vereker.

“Not the slightest. Crawley ought to know where they are,” replied Miss Cornell looking Vereker straight in the eyes.

“He doesn't,” said Vereker feeling that the question had been too pointed and trying to meet her direct gaze with equal frankness.

“But do you think there's any connection between the music room and the person who shot Frank?” asked Miss Cornell seriously.

“At the moment I see none,” replied Vereker guardedly, “but if his enemy wasn't in the house he must have entered and withdrawn by some door or window. In the circumstances we have to consider every possible contingency. I have an idea that the entry was made by the music room.”

“I hadn't thought of that. It seems very clever to me who knows nothing about detection how you decided that.”

“I may be wrong,” suggested Vereker.

“Of course you may,” she agreed with a nervous little laugh. “Well, I'm glad I'm not a detective. It would give me a perpetual headache to think of every possible contingency,” and glancing at her wrist-watch added, “It's quarter-past four and I must leave you, Mr. Vereker. I promised Mr. Carstairs that I'd be up at the Manor at four. Poor Roly, I'm afraid I treat him very shabbily and he's always so patient with me.”

“You seem very sorry for the gentleman,” remarked Vereker jocularly as he noted the sympathetic tone of her voice.

“Yes, I am, but that's more of my personal history and I'm not going to tell you anything about it,” replied Miss Cornell. “By the way, you won't forget to call at the bungalow and talk music to father when you can spare the time.”

“I'll look him up the first opportunity I get,” said Vereker and asked, “Can you give me the name of a good hairdresser in Bury, Miss Cornell? There's not one in Marston village as far as I can see.”

Miss Cornell promptly gave him an address which Vereker jotted down in his notebook.

“That's the place I always go to,” she said, “and I'm sure there's a gentleman's department. In any case there are several good hairdressers in the town. You'll have no difficulty in finding one. When you call at the bungalow I shall probably be in, too. Don't be afraid to ask me any further questions. I want to help you all I can.
Au revoir
.”

With these words she rose from the garden seat and walked quickly towards the house. On her departure Vereker immediately let himself out of the garden by the door in the north wall through which Miss Cornell had entered. He soon discovered that there was a beaten path which, passing through a narrow belt of woodland, led to the bungalow and thence on to the main Bury road. He reached this main road by leaving the bungalow on his right. A few minutes later he was walking towards Marston at a leisurely pace when a bus overtook him. Seeing that its destination was Bury, he boarded it and reached the town about half an hour later. There he went to the address Miss Cornell had given him, had his hair cut, got into a long conversation with the barber about the Marston murder, and journeyed back to The Dog and Partridge Inn. Inspector Heather had not yet returned and Vereker repaired to his room. Opening his suitcase he produced a microscope and setting it up on his dressing-table in a good light, commenced a minute examination of certain objects which he had collected during his afternoon's work. As he examined these objects his face showed traces of suppressed excitement.

“Rather important!” he soliloquized. “In fact the evidence may prove vital!”

He was busy on this operation when he suddenly heard the booming voice of the inspector talking to the landlord below. Leaving his instrument on the dressing-table, he washed and descended to the little room on the ground floor for his evening meal.

You're back early, Mr. Vereker,” said the inspector as he sat down to the table.

“I returned about six o'clock.”

“You've been over to Bury to get your hair cut,” said the inspector. “I was thinking it was time you shed your artist's thatch and began to look respectable like a detective. What have you been doing up in your room for the last hour and a half?”

“Playing about with a microscope. You see, Heather, I can't hand over odd jobs to experts as you do.”

“I often think it's a pity I didn't mug up microscopy myself,” said the inspector. “It's difficult sometimes to let the expert know just what you're after. Not being a detective, he frequently doesn't know the points to look for and misses the things the 'tec would grab with both eyes. What have you been examining?”

“We'll come to that later, Heather. I now propose a conference, one of our usual ones. You must give the findings of the hundred per cent. detective and I'll give the results of my amateurish fumbling. D'you feel like it?”

“I'm in the very mood,” replied Heather putting a large fat hand lovingly round his pewter mug. “Let's begin at the beginning. First point for discussion—where was Frank Cornell shot?”

“In the right eye,” replied Vereker.

“No, don't start fooling or I'll shut up shop and send for more beer. Where, in what place, at what spot in Marston Manor, was the young man?”

“Either on the half-landing or in the music room, seems to be the answer, Heather. I'm at present banking on the half-landing. The big objection to that theory lies in another question. I gather that the bullet entered his right eye and came to rest to the left of the occipital bone. Here's where your knowledge of pistol shot wounds comes in. Would death be almost instantaneous, or could Cornell have staggered up the stairs to the corridor landing with a bullet in his brain?”

“The point you raise is a difficult one. Most people would at once say he couldn't have run up those steps, but it's impossible to be definite in such a matter. In one case well known to all criminologists a man had a knife stuck up to the hilt in his brain. He walked a couple of miles to a doctor who yanked it out. The man recovered and his is not an isolated case. He must have been what we call hard-headed. Therefore in our case a sound expert would be very cautious in making a definite statement. Of course your question raises the point of how Cornell got up those steps if he was killed almost instantaneously.”

“Good, Heather. Did the murderer carry him up? You remember the body was lying on its back. If the murderer had dragged the body up the second flight he would naturally turn it over on its back on account of the feet. It was an unusual position. I expected to find him lying on his face.”

“That's possible, but why should he drag the body upstairs?”

“To hide the fact that he was shot near or in the music room. He may have intended to drag the body up to the body's bedroom.”

“You've got music room on the brain, Mr. Vereker,” remarked the inspector, but a slow smile spread over his face and he added, “Yet it's a cute suggestion. What made you first think the murderer had dragged the body upstairs?”

“Cornell's shoes. A man can walk upstairs quietly enough in his shoes if we leave bibulous jokes out of our consideration. But he can't be dragged upstairs without their bumping noisily on every step. The shoelaces hadn't been untied which shows that the shoes had been pulled off in a hurry in the dark.”

“He could have pulled them off himself in that fashion,” remarked the inspector. “I wear my shoes fairly large and easy and in a hurry I often force them off without untying the laces. But you've got your theory and you're going to make details fit it comfortably. You've some idea about that music room, I see. Out with it like an honest man.”

“Yes, Heather. I've a strong suspicion that the murderer entered by the music room and left by it or was in the house and left by that outer door. In your inquiries you'll have found that a duplicate set of keys to the music room doors is missing. It went missing some time ago.”

“Does your ghost come into the business?” asked Heather filling his pipe carefully.

“Ghosts are handy things at times and one may have had a finger in this pie, but we'll leave ghosts alone for the moment and go over the ground carefully. In the first place, it's pretty certain Cornell never left the house that night in spite of his changing his clothes and putting on ordinary walking shoes. He may have had the intention but he never carried it out.”

“That's sound,” interrupted the inspector. “Sunday was a wet, dirty night and his shoes are just as clean as when they left Tapp's hands. But to spoil your little theory of the body being dragged upstairs, it's possible Cornell took off his shoes himself and dropped them to defend himself when the murderer, we'll say, opened the music room door and fired at him. Your idea that he dragged the body up to the corridor was born firstly, because you think the murderer wished to conceal the fact that he entered the house by the music room or had anything to do with the music room; secondly, because it's not likely that a man with a bullet in his brain could reach the corridor on his own feet. Am I correct?”

“True, oh, Inspector, you follow me very adroitly,” replied Vereker smiling at the officer's acumen.

“Your theory implies another very important idea, Mr. Vereker,” continued Heather. “It says indirectly that the murder was committed by someone outside the house.”

“Steady on, Heather, don't jump to wild conclusions. Still, the absence of a weapon points that way, too. If anyone in the house fired that shot, the pistol would probably have been hidden in the house or flung away somewhere in the grounds. Knowing your thoroughness in searching, I feel sure it was not hidden in the house. What about the grounds?”

“My squad have gone fairly thoroughly over the grounds but that job's not finished yet. There's a belt of woodland to search and the lily pool to be dragged again. It's not in the house. We've even examined the nails in every floorboard to make sure that none has been lifted. Nails driven into floorboards have their heads below the board surface and can't be extracted without leaving tell-tale marks on the boards.”

“Well, I'll take it for granted the pistol's not in the house. It's certainly not in the music room. I have poked behind every picture and felt in the crannies of every chair and settee. I even searched the grand piano. Now, Heather, you've seen the body and got the doctor's evidence. How about the wound? What course did the bullet take?”

“Almost dead straight—only a very slight angle from the eye to the back of the head.”

“Then the man could hardly have been on the stairs above him or below him. At least, it's improbable. It looks as if he was either a taller man or about the same height and met him face to face.”

“I wouldn't count too much on that. If the man was shorter than Cornell, he might have been on a step above him, if taller, on a step below. Let it pass then,” said Vereker, “but you can now fish out the bullet for my inspection.”

Heather produced a matchbox and handed it to his friend. “You'll find the pellet inside,” he said.

Vereker opened the box and taking out the bullet from its wrapping of cotton wool held it on his palm and examined it meticulously under his magnifying glass.

“By Jove, that's very strange!” he exclaimed almost involuntarily.

“What's strange?” asked Heather, who had been watching him intently.

“The remark wasn't meant for you, but there's a very deep scratch or groove on the nickel case of the bullet. Did it hit the orbital bone in its passage, Heather?”

“No,” replied Heather quietly. “It's a strange mark. Not been done by the rifling of the pistol, I should say offhand. I wish to heaven we could find the weapon!”

Vereker then pulled an ordinary lead pencil from his pocket and adjusted the base of the bullet to the blunt end. “Not quite a quarter of an inch in diameter,” he said. “22-calibre pistol and from the material of the bullet—an automatic at that.”

“I see you're borrowing our methods, Mr. Vereker. The end of a lead pencil's a very useful little measure. The pistol is evidently what they call a vest-pocket automatic.”

“A very difficult weapon to shoot with, I should say. Was the murderer a deadly shot or was it just luck?”

“That's the question!” exclaimed Heather with just a suspicion of excitement. “You're getting hot. To add a little romance to the business, it's a weapon a woman would favour. Easily carried in a handbag and would be used more to frighten than to kill. A weapon of defence, say, against an amorous tramp, or a comforter during a Ripper scare. They're commoner in America than in England.”

“This is getting exciting, Heather. By the way, who was the last person in the house to see Frank Cornell before he retired?”

“At first I thought it was young Carstairs,” replied Heather, “but after some hesitation his fiancée admitted that probably she saw him after that. She was very coy about it and actually blushed when she confessed.”

“What made her hang back on the point?” asked Vereker, glancing up at the inspector's face.

“A very delicate matter, a very delicate matter, Mr. Vereker. The young lady knocked at his bedroom door and said she wanted to kiss her darling good night. She said he hadn't changed into his lounge suit when she saw him.”

“That all! Very disappointing story, Heather. Now has any woman in the house ever had or seen a vest-pocket automatic pistol?”

“I wasn't going to let you know that,” said Heather, “but I'll play fair. When I saw Mrs. Cornell this morning she said she wanted to do everything in her power to help me. Coming from a beautiful young woman, I was duly appreciative and asked her if she'd accompany me round the house. It wasn't long before I tactfully questioned her about pistols. I knew there had been a bit of a scare in the neighbourhood a couple of years ago. A tramp had assaulted a young woman about two miles out of Marston village and I wondered if Mrs. Cornell had bought one at the time. ‘Now that you mention it, Mr. Inspector,' she said, looking lovelier than ever, ‘my husband bought me a vest-pocket automatic a long while ago, but it was of no use to me. I think I could manage any man, tramp or otherwise, but I couldn't fire a pistol to save my life or honour for that matter. What's the use of a pistol when you've got to shut your eyes, press something and wait for a terrific bang? While you were trying to perform, your assailant would have knocked you on the head, stolen your lipstick and powder puff and got away!' I asked her what had become of it and she simply said, ‘Now, Inspector, how on earth should I know? I asked my husband to put it away in a safe place where it wouldn't go off unexpectedly and I never troubled any more about it.' Finally I got her down to something more definite. She thought it was put in a drawer of her bureau in the music room. Together we searched every likely place in vain. That pistol is missing and I'd like to bet a year's screw it's the one we want.”