The Silk Stocking Murders (22 page)

“And you’re not a bit frightened, Anne?” Roger asked.

“I shan’t have time to be frightened; I shall be too busy longing to catch him. But did I say you could call me ‘Anne’?”

“Didn’t you?” Roger smiled. “How forgetful of you, if you didn’t. But I warn you, I always call my female accomplices by their Christian names. And all girls under the age of twenty-one, too.”

“Good morning, Mr. Sheringham,” said Anne, and took a step towards the door.

“Oh, and by the way, Anne,” Roger said quickly, “be kind to my excellent friend Jerry, won’t you?”

“I’ll be polite. But you’re not forgetting that he’s on our list of suspects, are you?”

“He’s not, any longer. But you’re not to tell anyone that, even Pleydell. It’s a deadly secret. Between ourselves, Anne (and this is highly confidential), he’s not our man, but the evidence looks very much as if he were.”

“Do you mean that the police are after him?” asked Anne, round-eyed.

“If they’re not,” Roger replied evasively, “they’re failing in their duty. He’s in a very ticklish position. I’ve told him of our plans, by the way.”

Anne looked doubtful. “Was that wise, Mr. Sheringham?”

“May I remind you, Anne Manners,” retorted Roger, with dignity, “that
I
am in charge of this investigation? To your duty, girl. I shall be up at four-thirty to see if you’re still alive. Till then,
au revoir.”

As he ran down the steps outside Roger glanced at his watch. The time was just after half-past twelve. He would pay a flying visit to Gray’s Inn Road before lunch.

It was in Roger’s mind that, when it came down to hard facts, the only way of definitely clearing Newsome was to find out who really had committed the murders; in face of the accumulation of evidence anything less than that would not meet the case. And besides, how was he to prove by any other means that Newsome could not be guilty? The facts at present showed almost conclusively that he was. Even in the case of Janet Manners the connection was there.

But if Gerald Newsome had not killed Dorothy Fielder, then who had? The artisan was cleared, the solicitor-like old gentleman was not on the premises. The only conclusion was that the real murderer must have arrived after the porter had gone to his lunch, past one o’clock. But as against this, there was the fact that Jerry had received no answer to his ring at one o’clock exactly.

Seated in his taxi, Roger tried to thrash out this particular point. Dorothy Fielder had asked, almost blatantly, to be taken out to lunch. Was it likely that she would not have answered his ring, knowing from the time that it must be he, if she were in a position to do so? Certainly not. Then she could not have been in a position to do so. Why not? Assuming that she had
not
changed her mind, the only answer seemed to be that’ she had been forcibly detained. But she could not have been forcibly detained, because the murderer could not have arrived before one o’clock; that was definitely established.

“Hell!” said Roger, and lit a cigarette.

But was it definitely established, though? There was that gap between eleven o’clock, when the other girl, Zelma Deeping, came out, and twelve o’clock when the porter began his observations. Could the murderer have arrived during that interval? In that case he must have been in the flat till, after the girl’s death at about one-thirty. Why, if that were the case, did he put off killing her so long.? Was it because he knew that the porter would not be looking out between one and two and he would be able to escape unobserved? That, thought Roger, was a very interesting idea; it argued a close acquaintance on the murderer’s part with conditions in the Mansions—in other words, close acquaintance with Miss Dorothy Fielder herself. How did this square with Pleydell’s theory of an actor? Uncommonly well. But then one came up against Sir James Bannister and Billy Burton again, and neither the stately Sir James nor the lanky and elongated piece of humorous quicksilver, known to a hilarious public as Billy Burton, could possibly be the man they were after. Damn!

But was the field of actors so very limited?
Must
the murderer have been at Monte Carlo at the time of the first death? Couldn’t (and here Roger sat up with a jerk) the truth be that the Monte Carlo death was a genuine suicide, which had so tickled the imagination of the super-sadistic murderer that he had felt impelled to go and do the same thing for himself? Now there
was
an idea.

It brought him to the front door of the Mansions.

Shelving further consideration for the moment of this new possibility, Roger sought out the porter.

“Good morning,” he said briskly. “You remember me. I was here with the police last Thursday, regarding the death of Miss Fielder in flat Number Six.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” murmured the porter.

“There are one or two further points I want to learn from you,” Roger continued in a tone of authority. “It seems obvious from what you tell us that the murderer must have arrived either after one o’clock or before twelve. Now is there any way of obtaining information as to the arrivals here between the time when Miss Deeping went out, soon after eleven, and twelve o’clock?”

The porter shook his head. “No, sir. I’m afraid there isn’t. Anybody might have come then, and none of us be any the wiser.”

“I see. That’s a pity. Well, tell me this. Supposing the murderer entered the Mansions between eleven and twelve, but for some reason did not want to get into the flat till considerably later: is there any place where he could have remained in hiding? A cupboard, say, or a box-room at the top—anything like that?”

Again the porter shook his head. “No, sir. The stairs are quite bare, as you can see. There’s no cupboards or anything like that. Without he’d been in one of the other flats, I don’t see how he could have stayed out of sight inside the building.”

“Ah!” said Roger thoughtfully. “Yes, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have been—— Look here, I want a list of the names and professions of the other people who have flats in this block. Will you tell them to me while I write them down? No. 1, that’s yours. No. 2?”

The porter proceeded to supply him with the information. “You seem to have a lot of stage-folk here,” Roger commented, as the list proceeded.

“There’s stage-folk
and
stage-folk,” said the porter darkly. “I mean, there’s them that say they’re on the stage because they really are on the stage, and there’s them that say they’re on the stage because they’ve got to say something.”

“‘Described as an actress,’ in other words. But you don’t mean to say you’ve got any of that sort here?”

“Bound to have all sorts in a big place like this, sir,” said the porter, with an air of resignation.

“But isn’t the landlord strict?”

“Well, he is, sir, yes. But it’s not always too easy, you know. I mean, if it’s a lady like No. 7, who only has… Well, what I mean, sir,” said the porter desperately, ceasing to make efforts to wrap up stark facts, in a decent piece of circumlocution, and explained what he did mean.

“Dear, dear!” said Roger. “I suppose it would be indiscreet to ask anything further?”

“I’m well enough paid to keep my mouth shut, sir,” replied the porter significantly.

Roger, who had no intention of paying him well enough to open it again, for information of a purely scandalous interest, smiled with equal significance and went on with his list.

W
HEN
Roger arrived back at the Albany, ten minutes late for his lunch, he had the list in his pocket; but that did not say that he quite knew what to do with it. To investigate in person the circumstances of the twenty-odd people whose names appeared on it would take far more than the three short days he had at his disposal; yet he was not at all sure that such an investigation should not be undertaken. The case was so dark that any possible means of throwing light upon it must not be ignored; and improbable though it might seem, who knew whether the vital clue he was seeking did not lie inside that block of Mansions rather than outside it?

Over lunch he made up his mind. The police, no doubt, would know something about the other flat-holders, but the line of inquiry which they would have followed would not be the same as the one which Roger would want examined. He would therefore take the list round to a firm of inquiry agents and put them on to it, no expense to be spared, a full report within thirty-six hours. He rang up Scotland Yard immediately after the meal, obtained the name of such a firm, conducted by an ex-C.I.D. Chief Inspector, and went round at once to put the matter in hand. He was assured that everything he wanted (and he mentioned particularly what he did want) could be obtained in the time.

His next move he had already planned. Obviously he must pay a call on Miss Zelma Deeping. Her temporary address he knew already. Once more he hailed a taxi (Roger felt that this was the most expensive case he had ever handled) and was driven to Hampstead.

Miss Deeping, whom he had not hitherto met, was a vivacious, dark-haired young woman of twenty-eight or thereabouts. Roger had no difficulty in getting her to talk. She told him frankly that she would talk to him for a year on end if it would help to catch the man who had murdered Dorothy. (Roger noticed that she used the word “murder.” Evidently Miss Deeping had no doubts as to how her friend had met her death.)

Without beating about the bush, he proceeded to the questions he wanted to put.

“How was Miss Fielder dressed when you left her?”

“She wasn’t,” replied Miss Deeping promptly. “She was in the bath.”

“Oh! Then she might not have been fully dressed at all that morning?”

“No, I shouldn’t say she was. She’d been having what we called one of our lazy mornings. We used to have them if we felt extra tired, or had a headache, or anything like that. The one who was going to be lazy would stay in bed, and the other would bring her breakfast; the lazy one would get up when she felt like it have her bath, and be a perfect lady till lunch-time.” Zelma Deeping was trying to speak in a light voice, but her tones shook every now and then, and once she dabbed surreptitiously at her eyes.

“I see,” said Roger, who was terrified of her bursting into tears. He assumed a very matter-of-fact, brisk tone. “You think it probable that she was wearing the underclothes she was found in, and just a wrapper over them (the one that was on a chair, I suppose), when she let her murderer in?”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Deeping, “I suppose she must have been.” She spoke in a hesitating way.

“Why aren’t you sure?” Roger asked quickly.

“Well, it doesn’t sound a bit like Dorothy to let anyone in when she was in her wrapper. We weren’t so very conventional, either of us, but once you go beyond a certain limit, if you happen to be on the stage, your reputation’s gone, whether you’ve done anything to deserve it or not. Dorothy and I were always rather careful in that way. I don’t mean we were so silly as not to give a man tea if either of us was alone in the flat; but I shouldn’t have said Dorothy would have entertained a man in the morning in her wrapper.”

“What would she have done, then?”

“Either told him he couldn’t come in, or else, if she knew him very well, pushed him into the sitting-room while she went to slip on a frock.”

“Supposing if it were a plumber, or a man to see about the electric light—that sort of man?”

Miss Deeping smiled. “Oh, well, that’s different. I suppose it’s silly, but it
is
different, you know. After all, one doesn’t—what shall I say?—dally with a plumber, does one?”

“The point is well taken; yes, it is different. And supposing it had been an actor? She would have gone to slip on a frock?”

“Yes, I’m sure she would.”

“And yet she didn’t,” Roger pointed out. “Can you suggest any explanation, Miss Deeping? It seems to me quite an important point.”

Zelma Deeping considered. “The only thing I can think of is that he took her by surprise as soon as she’d opened the door. Couldn’t that be what happened?”

“Yes, quite well. Now, I’ve gathered that Miss Fielder didn’t take much interest in men. That is so, isn’t it?”

“No particular interest. She didn’t flirt, if that’s what you mean. We both had plenty of men friends. But they weren’t any more than friends.”

“You’re quite sure that Miss Fielder had not recently begun to have an affair with somebody?” Roger already knew that Dorothy Fielder’s moral character had been all that the most zealous advocate of the purity of the British stage would have desired. But that did not say that she was not prepared to receive just one man in her wrapper.

Miss Deeping promptly extinguished this hope. “No, I’m sure she hadn’t. She’d certainly have told me (we’ve lived together for over six years now), but she never said a word about one man more than any other.”

“Humph!” said Roger, disappointed; so far this interview had yielded nothing. He tried a new tack. “Of course you’re sure that when you went out you left Miss Fielder alone?”

“Quite sure,” agreed the girl, surprised. “Why, I couldn’t have overlooked anyone in the hall, could I?”

“No, I suppose not,” Roger admitted. “Well, did you see anybody loitering on the stairs, or coming in as you went out, or generally behaving in a furtive manner?”

“No. I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“That’s a nuisance,” said Roger.

“Are you meaning that the murderer might have arrived as early as eleven o’clock?” asked Miss Deeping. “Because if you think that, I’m quite sure you’re wrong. Dorothy might have stayed a few minutes in her wrapper, if he’d come on really important business, but she certainly wouldn’t have been with him like that for two hours. That I can tell you is out of the question, Mr. Sheringham.”

“Is it? Then something is established. Now here’s another thing I want to ask you about; had Miss Fielder ever mentioned the name of Newsome to you?”

Miss Deeping shook her dark head. “The police asked me that too. No, I’m sure she didn’t. At any rate, I haven’t the least recollection of the name.”

“Not with regard to a supper-party once, and a casual meeting in the street once or twice afterwards?” Roger prompted.