The Silk Stocking Murders (5 page)

“Well,” said Roger, with more cheerfulness than he felt, “we’ll simply have to see what we can do; that’s all.”

The upshot was that Roger spent a very pleasant week-end in Dorsetshire, saw a great deal of Anne, who, to his great delight, did not seem to have the faintest wish to discuss his books with him, and returned to London on the Monday apparently not an inch nearer his objective. “Though a week-end in Dorsetshire in early April,” be told the lady in the office as he paid his hotel-bill, “is a thing no man should be without.”

“Quite,” agreed the young lady.

Roger strolled down to the station. He had made a point of mentioning to Anne the time of his train, in case anything cropped up that she might want to communicate to him at the last moment. As he walked on to the platform, he looked up and down to see if she were there. She was not.

With a sense of disappointment which he could not remember having experienced for at least ten years, and of which he became instantly as near to being ashamed as Roger could concerning anything connected with himself, he made his way to the bookstall and bought a paper. Opening it a few minutes later, his eye at once caught certain headlines on the centre page. The headlines ran as follows:—

ANOTHER SILK STOCKING TRAGEDY
S
OCIETY
B
EAUTY
H
ANGS
H
ERSELF
L
ADY
U
RSULA
G
RAEME’S
S
HOCKING
F
ATE

“This,” said Roger, “is becoming too much of a good thing.”

S
EATED
in the train, Roger began to peruse the account of Lady Ursula’s death. Now that it had to deal with the daughter of an earl instead of an obscure habituée of nightclubs, the story had been allotted two full columns on the centre page, and every detail, relative or not, that could be hastily scraped together had been inserted. Briefly, the facts were as follows.

Lady Ursula had left her home in Eaton Square, where she lived with her widowed mother (the present Earl, her eldest brother, was in the Diplomatic Service abroad), shortly before eight. She dined with a party of friends at a dance-club in the West End, where she stayed, dancing and talking, till about eleven. She then began to complain of a headache and tried to induce one of the others to accompany her for a little run in her car; the rest of the party refused, however, as it was raining and the car was an open two-seater. Lady Ursula then left the club, saying that she would go for a run alone to blow her headache away, if no one would accompany her.

At half-past two in the morning a girl called Irene Macklane, an artist and a friend of Lady Ursula’s, returned to her studio in Kensington from a party in a neighbouring studio and found Lady Ursula’s car outside. She was not surprised at this, as Lady Ursula was in the habit of calling on her friends at the most unusual of times of the day and night. On going inside and calling, however, she could at first see no sign of her.

The studio had been made out of the remains of some old stables, and spanning its width in the centre was a large oak beam, some eight feet above the ground, in the middle of which, on the underside, was a large hook, from which Miss Macklane had hung an old-fashioned lantern. This lantern contained an electric light bulb which was connected by a flex to a light-point farther down the room. On turning the switch at the door, Miss Macklane was surprised to see the lantern light upon the floor some distance away from the beam instead of in its normal position. She lifted it up and was then horrified to see Lady Ursula hanging in its place from the hook in the beam.

The details of her death corresponded almost exactly with those of Janet’s and the other woman’s. An overturned table lay on the floor a few feet away, and Lady Ursula had made use of one of the stockings which she was wearing at the time; the leg from which she had taken it was bare, though the foot still wore its brocade slipper. A loop had been formed by tying the extreme ends of the stocking together, this had been passed over Lady Ursula’s head, the slack twisted round three or four times, and a tiny loop at the end slipped over the hook. She had then apparently kicked the table away and met her death, like the other two, from slow asphyxiation.

The note she had left for Miss Macklane, however, was a little more explicit than those of the others, though its wording gave scope for conjecture. It ran:

I’m so sorry to have to do this here, my dear, but there’s simply nowhere else, and mother would have a fit if I did it at home. Don’t be too terribly furious with me!

U.

There followed a eulogistic account of Lady Ursula, “by a friend,” expatiating on her originality, her lack of convention and her recent engagement to the wealthy son of a wealthy financier. Whether it was the engagement, or her determination at all costs to be original, that had led Lady Ursula to dispense with a life with which, as she was in the habit of informing her friends, she had for many years been bored stiff, the writer obviously found some difficulty in deciding.

Roger put the paper across his knees and began absently to fill his pipe. This was, as he had commented, too much of a good thing. It was becoming a regular epidemic. Fantastic pictures floated across his mental vision of the thing becoming a society craze, and all the debutantes suspending themselves in rows by their own stockings. He pulled himself together.

The real trouble, of course, was that this did not square with the article he had written before leaving London. It upset things badly. For though the unknown habituée of night-clubs might have possessed the predisposition to suicide about which he had expatiated so glibly, he was quite sure that Lady Ursula Graeme did not. And from what he knew about the lady, even apart from the friend’s article upon her, he was still more sure that, if by any strange chance she had decided to do away with herself, she would most certainly not imitate the method of an insignificant chorus-girl and a wretched little prostitute. If she were to imitate anybody it would be in the grand manner. She might cut an artery in a hot bath, for instance. But far more probably she would evolve some daringly unconventional method of suicide which should ensure her in death an even greater publicity than she had been able to attain in life. Lady Ursula, in short, would set the fashion in suicide, not follow it.

And that letter, too. It might be more explicit in its terms than the other two, but it was even more puzzling. Whatever one might think about them in other ways, one does give our aristocracy credit for good manners; and by no stretch of etiquette can it be considered good manners to suspend oneself by one’s stocking in somebody else’s studio. Indeed, it would be far more in keeping with the lady’s character that she should have chosen a lamp-post. And would the dowager have no fit so long as her daughter did not suspend herself actually in Eaton Square?

It was all very curious. But it wasn’t the least good arguing about it, Roger decided, turning to another page of the paper, for there was no getting away from the fact that Lady Ursula
had
done all these things which she couldn’t possibly have done.

He proceeded to wade through the leading articles with some determination.

Lady Ursula’s death provided, of course, a three-days’ wonder. The inquest was fixed for Wednesday morning, and Roger made up his mind to attend it. He was anxious to see whether any of these little points which had struck his own attention, so small in themselves but so interesting in the aggregate, would strike that of anyone else.

Unfortunately Roger was not the only person who had conceived the idea of attending the inquest. On a conservative calculation, three thousand other people had done so as well. The other three thousand, however, had not also conceived the idea of obtaining a press-pass beforehand; so that in the end Roger, battered but more or less intact, was able to edge his way inside by the time the proceedings were not much more than half over. The first eye he caught was that of Chief Detective Inspector Moresby.

The Chief Inspector was wedged unobtrusively at the back of the court like any member of the public, and it was plain that he was not here in any official capacity. “Then why in hades;” thought Roger very tensely, as he wriggled gently towards him, “is he here at all?” Chief Detective Inspectors do not attend inquests on fashionable suicides by way of killing time.

He grinned in friendly fashion as he saw Roger approaching (so friendly, indeed, that Roger winced slightly, remembering what must be inspiring most of the grin), but shook his head in reply to Roger’s raised eyebrows of inquiry. Brought to a halt a few paces away, Roger had no option but to give up the idea of further progress for the moment. He devoted his attention to the proceedings.

A man was on the witness-stand, a tall, dark, good-looking man of a slightly Jewish cast of countenance, somewhere in the early thirties; and it did not need more than two or three questions and replies to show Roger that this was the fiancé to whom allusion had been made. Roger watched him with interest. If anybody ought to have known Lady Ursula, it should be this man. Would he give any indication that he considered anything curious in the case?

Regarding him closely, Roger found it difficult to say. He was evidently suffering deeply (“Poor devil!” thought Roger. “And being made to stand up and show himself off before all of us like this, too!”), and yet there was a subtle suggestion of guardedness in his replies. Once or twice he seemed on the verge of making a comment which might be enlightening, but always he pulled himself up in time. He carried his loss with a dignity of sorrow which reminded Roger of Anne’s bearing in the garden when he had first told her of his suspicions; but it was clear that there were points upon which he was completely puzzled, the main one being why his fiancée should have committed suicide at all.

“She never, gave me the faintest indication,” he said in a low voice, in answer to some question of the Coroner’s. “She seemed perfectly happy, always.” He spoke rather like a small boy who had been whipped and sent to bed for something which for the life of him he can’t understand to be a crime at all.

The Coroner was dealing with him as sympathetically as possible, but there were some questions that had to be asked. “You have heard that she was in the habit of saying that she was bored stiff with life. Did she say that to you?”

“Often,” replied the other, with a wan imitation of a smile. “She frequently said things like that. It was her pose. At least,” he added, so low that Roger could hardly hear, “we thought it was her pose.”

“You were to have been married the month after next in June?”

“Yes.”

The Coroner consulted a paper in his hand. “Now, on the night in question you went to a theatre, I understand, and afterwards to your club?”

“That is so.”

“You therefore did not see Lady Ursula at all that evening?”

“No.”

“So you cannot speak as to her state of mind after five o’clock, when you left her after tea?”

“No. But it was nearer half-past five when I left her.”

“Quite so. Now you have heard the other witnesses who spent the evening with her. Do you agree that she was in her usual health and spirits when you saw her at tea-time?”

“Absolutely.”

“She gave you no indication that anything might be on her mind?”

“None whatever.”

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Pleydell. I know how distressing this must be for you. I’ll just ask you finally: can you tell us anything which might shed light on the reason why Lady Ursula should have taken her own life?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said the other, in the same low, composed voice as that in which he had given all the rest of his evidence; and he added, with unexpected emotion: “I wish to God I could!”

“He
does
think there’s something funny about it,” was Roger’s comment to himself, as Pleydell stepped down. “Not merely why she should have done such a thing at all, but some of those other little points as well. I wonder—I
wonder
what Moresby’s here for!”

During the next twenty minutes nothing of importance emerged. The Coroner was evidently trying to make the case as little painful for the Dowager Countess and Pleydell as possible, and since it was apparently so straightforward there was no point in spinning out the proceedings. The jury must have thought the same, for their verdict came pat: “Suicide during temporary insanity caused by the unnatural conditions of modern life.” Which was a kind way of putting “Lady Ursula’s life.”

There was first the hush and then the little stir which always succeeds the delivery of a verdict, and the densely packed court began slowly to empty.

Roger saw to it that the emptying process brought him in contact with Moresby. Having already tested the strength of that gentleman’s official reticence, he had not the faintest hope of expecting to crack it on this occasion; but there is never any harm in trying.

“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” was the Chief Inspector’s genial greeting as they were brought together at last. “Well, I haven’t seen you for a long time, sir.”

“Since last summer, no,” Roger agreed. “And you’ll oblige me by not talking about last summer over the drink we’re now about to consume. Any other summer you like, but not last one.”

The Chief Inspector’s grin widened, but he gave the necessary promise. They walked sedately towards a hostelry of Roger’s choosing; not the nearest, because everybody else would be going there. The Chief Inspector knew perfectly well why he was being invited to have a drink; Roger knew that he knew; the Chief Inspector knew that Roger knew that he knew. It was all very amusing, and both of them were enjoying it.

Both of them knew, too, that it was up to Roger to open the proceedings if they were to be opened. But Roger did nothing of the kind. They drank up their beer, chatting happily about this, about that and about the other, but never about Coroner’s inquests and Chief Detective Inspectors from Scotland Yard at them; they drank up some more beer, provided by Moresby, and then they embarked on yet more beer, provided again by Roger. Both Roger and the Chief Inspector liked beer.