Waiting for Orders (11 page)

The sad brown eyes blinked. ‘But, Assistant-Commissioner, Mrs Falcon makes no accusations. Nor do I think that she believes that there is anything seriously wrong. She wishes only, as I have said, to make a scandal, to revenge herself on her sister-in-law. She comes to me principally for sympathy and because she wishes to talk about the affair. She is very satisfied that I have been to Meresham, but when I returned she even forgot to ask me about the possibility of her brother’s death being unnatural. The suggestion in these letters was purely malicious. She had no idea that it was a sound suggestion. No, Assistant-Commissioner, it is not Mrs Falcon but I who make the accusation.’

Mercer sat back. ‘And who are you accusing, Doctor?’

Dr Czissar cleared his throat and swallowed hard. ‘Attention, please!’ he said sharply.

‘I am all attention,’ snapped Mercer.

‘Good. Then I will begin by giving you the facts. The first is contained in Mrs Falcon’s letters to herself. Three months after the Captain’s death, Mrs Pewsey marries Mr Stenson. “So soon! Strange, is it not?” says Mrs Falcon. It is indeed strange, Assistant-Commissioner. Three months is a very short time in which to bury one husband, adjust one’s mind to the idea of widowhood, adjust one’s mind again to the idea of replacing the dead husband with a new one, and then marry him. One might reach a decision in so short a time, but actually to marry as well … It is, I think, unreal. It seems to me as if the idea of the marriage had been in the mind of Mrs Pewsey and Mr Stenson
before
the Captain died.’

‘You can’t prove that, Doctor,’ said Mercer quickly.

‘There is corroborative evidence, Assistant-Commissioner. In the first place, there is the matter of their secrecy. It is not easy, I should think, to keep a secret in a small town like Meresham. Yet, had a member of the Meresham Golf Club not encountered Mr Stenson and the lady in a London hotel the day after they were married, no one in Meresham would even have known that the two had even spoken to one another. Yet, if all was well, they had no reason for secrecy. As the Captain’s friend, Mr Stenson would have had a perfectly good reason for seeing Mrs Pewsey in Meresham. But, and I have the authority of Mrs Pewsey’s maid for the statement, Stenson had only once been in the Pewseys’ house. He had had dinner there one evening a year or more before the Captain died. Secrecy becomes a habit, Assistant-Commissioner. There was secrecy after the Captain’s death because there had been need for secrecy before it.

‘Another point. There was, I discovered, a great difference between the characters of Mr Stenson and the Captain. Mr Stenson was very popular. He had money. He played golf well. He was noted for his sense of humour. He was handsome. The Captain, however, was most unpopular. He was always trying to do business with people. He drank too much. He played golf badly. He was a bore. Nobody in Meresham could understand why Mr Stenson put up with him. That he did so is most significant.’

Mercer pursed his lips. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,
Doctor, I think you’ve let yourself read more into this business than is really there.’

The cow-like eyes grew rounder and sadder. ‘Yes? I will continue. I have interviewed Mrs Pewsey’s maid. The house is shut up at the moment, but she was there on the night that the Captain died. Her evidence is interesting – vitally interesting, I think. She heard the Captain return home to die.

‘She says that she had never known him so drunk before. He fell up the stairs and stumbled along the passage to his bedroom. And he was talking to himself. He had never done that before. As he passed the door to her room, she heard one sentence clearly. He was mumbling and then he said: “Socrates! What’s he mean, Socrates? My name’s not Socrates.” She heard no more. But she heard enough, I think.’

Mercer threw up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I just don’t understand. The man was very drunk. Not an unnatural thing in a heavy drinker. Remember, too, that he had been drinking less since he had seen the doctor a week before. He had broken out again. It overstrained his heart. He died. The doctor’s autopsy proves it beyond doubt.’

‘You think that?’ Dr Czissar looked mournful. ‘The cause of death was a respiratory failure.’

‘Precisely. Loss of breath. Most of us die from it sooner or later.’ Mercer stood up. The spell was broken. Dr Czissar was, after all, merely a crank. By freakish chance he had managed to succeed in one or two cases in which the Yard had looked like failing. Now, he had shown himself up. Mercer smiled tolerantly.

‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘you asked me for my advice in this business. I will give it to you. Go back to your landlady and tell her not to be stupid. And forget about the matter yourself. That is all, I think.’ He held out his hand.

But Dr Czissar did not rise to take it.

‘This, as I have said, is a case of murder, Assistant-Commissioner,’ he said deliberately. ‘Justice must be done. I have given you the facts. I ask you only to draw conclusions.’

‘I have told you my conclusion, Doctor. I repeat it. I think you are making something of nothing.’

Dr Czissar straightened up. ‘I have given you the facts without prejudice,’ he said. ‘Murder has been done. It is clear.’

‘Not to me, Doctor.’

‘Very well. I will explain.’ He cleared his throat, swallowed, and said sharply: ‘Attention, please!’

Mercer relapsed into his chair. ‘I can spare you two more minutes, Doctor,’ he said angrily.

‘It will be enough,’ said Dr Czissar.

‘In the first place, we have the marriage of Mrs Pewsey and Mr Stenson. It is the second mistake they have made. It is a fact that asks questions. There is no doubt that they had been having an affair together for very many months. I think that they must have made up their minds to murder the Captain very early on. Mrs Falcon says that her brother wrote to her nearly a year ago saying that his wife had asked for a divorce and that he had refused. I think we shall find that it was very soon after that that Mr Stenson bought a life insurance policy from the Captain and became so strangely friendly with him. If we wish for more evidence of the affair, I think that we shall find it at the Hotel Metropolis. It was there that the two were seen after their marriage. Doubtless they had been there many times before. So stupid of them to get married so soon after the murder.

‘But you are impatient. We come to the murder. The first thing that is curious is this heart trouble of the Captain’s. It was not serious enough to kill. The doctor did not think so. He insisted upon an autopsy. But’ – Dr Czissar raised a cautionary finger – ‘he performed the autopsy himself without consulting the coroner. As I understand English law, he was within his rights if he had the permission of Mrs Pewsey; but what is the value of his autopsy? Great experience is necessary in cases when the cause of death is not reasonably obvious.’

Mercer grunted.

‘Next,’ pursued Dr Czissar, ‘let us consider the manner of the Captain’s death. According to the maid, he behaved in an unusual manner. He stumbled and staggered. Now, Assistant-Commissioner, I, too, find that unusual. The Captain was a habitual heavy drinker. In my experience, I have found that such men do
not
usually stumble and stagger from the effects of drink. The Captain was stumbling and staggering. The cause of death was respiratory failure. What is the link between those two facts? I will tell you. It is the word “Socrates”.’

‘What?’

‘You have heard of Socrates, Assistant-Commissioner? Ah, yes. Then you may remember the description of his death. For a time he walks about, then his steps become difficult. Paralysis begins to creep up his legs. He is forced to lie down. The paralysis creeps higher to his chest. And then he dies – of a respiratory failure – paralysis of the lungs. There is only one poison which has that effect. It is the poison which was given to Socrates.’

‘You mean hemlock! But …’

‘Hemlock is the name of the plant from which it is obtained, Assistant-Commissioner. The actual poison is coniine. If the coniine is pure and concentrated, a few drops kill very quickly. An ordinary infusion of hemlock leaves would kill, unless treatment were given, in from two to three hours. There are, I find, quantities of hemlock growing in Mr Stenson’s garden. There is no doubt, I think, that when the Captain went into Mr Stenson’s house that night, he was given with his whisky an infusion of hemlock leaves. He had been drinking all the evening. He would not notice the taste. But Mr Stenson made the first mistake. He has a sense of humour. He was nervous and worried. He was not used to murder. He turned to his sense of humour for comfort. He tried to make a joke of the situation. He called the Captain “Socrates”.’

‘But, good heavens, man!’ exploded Mercer, ‘even if this story is true, how on earth are we going to prove it?’

Dr Czissar got to his feet with dignity. ‘I am sure that you will find a way. Coniine remains detectable in the body for many months. An exhumation and an autopsy by an experienced pathologist with no preconceived ideas about cardiac weakness should help you. You will not, I think, be able to prove administration, but I have no doubt that you will be able to build up a circumstantial case strong enough to convict.’

‘But what about the woman?’ demanded Mercer. ‘You said that “they” did the murder.’

‘Oh, yes. Mrs Pewsey was certainly an accessory before the fact. There is no doubt in my mind that it was she who prepared the way for the death certificate by sending her husband to the doctor a week before his death. It is not difficult to upset a drinker’s heart. Aspirin tablets are almost tasteless dissolved in
soda-water. But you may have difficulty in proving anything against her.

‘It is Mr Stenson for whom I am sorry,’ he went on. ‘I have heard so much about the English sense of humour. Now I understand it. I did not think that it would be so macabre, but I like it. It is piquant. Socrates!’ He emitted an apologetic little giggle. ‘It is really very funny.’

I
T
was after the murderer of Felton Spenser had been tried and convicted that Assistant-Commissioner Mercer finally became resigned to the occasional intrusions of Dr Jan Czissar into the affairs of his department at New Scotland Yard. For that reason alone, the case would be worth reporting. The conversion of an Assistant-Commissioner of New Scotland Yard into an ordinary human being must be reckoned a major triumph of the power of reason over the force of habit. But the case has another claim to the interest of students of criminology in general and, in particular, of those who contemplate committing murders of their own. It demonstrated clearly that the first requisite for the committal of a perfect murder is the omniscience of a god.

The world first heard of the death of Felton Spenser late one January evening, and through the medium of one of the BBC’s news bulletins. ‘We regret,’ said the announcer, in funereal tones, ‘to announce the death in London tonight of Mr Felton Spenser, the poet. He was fifty-three. Although Mr Spenser was born in Manchester, the early years of his life were spent in the county of Flint, and it was in praise of the Flint countryside and scenery that much of his poetry was written. His first collection of poems, “The Merciful Light”, was published in nineteen-hundred and nine. Mr Marshall Grieve, the critic and a friend of Spenser’s, said of him to-night: “He was a gentleman in the Edwardian sense of the word. He was a man without enemies. His verse had a placid limpidity rarely met with nowadays, and it flowed with the lyrical ease of his beloved Dee.’ ”

That was all. It was left to the morning newspapers to disclose the fact that Felton Spenser had been found by his friend, Mr Marshall Grieve, ‘the author-critic’, shot in his Bloomsbury
flat, that there had been a revolver by his side, and that he had recently been suffering from fits of depression. To Assistant-Commissioner Mercer, Detective-Inspector Denton ultimately brought further details.

Felton Spenser had lived in the top flat of a converted house. There were three other flats below his. That on the ground floor was occupied by a dressmaker and her husband, named Lobb. On the first floor lived Mr Marshall Grieve. The second floor was unoccupied. The dead man’s flat consisted of two large rooms, used as bedroom and sitting-room respectively, a smaller room used as a study, a kitchen, and a bathroom. It had been in the sitting-room that his body had been found.

At about six thirty that evening, the sound of a shot had come from the top of the house. The dressmaker’s husband, Mr Lobb, who had just returned home from his work, ran to the door of his flat. At the same moment, Mr Grieve, who had also heard the shot, had appeared at his door at the head of the first flight of stairs. They had gone up together.

After breaking down the door of Felton Spenser’s flat, which had a patent lock on it, they had found Spenser half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa, his arms extended, and his hands turned back as though he had, in the throes of death, gripped the edge of the sofa. The body had been rendered rigid by a cadaveric spasm. The appearance of the wound suggested that when the shot had been fired, the revolver had been within an inch or two of the head.

Grieve stated that Spenser had been suffering for some time from fits of intense depression. He knew of several possible causes of these fits. Spenser had been profoundly disappointed by the reception accorded to a book of his poems published the year before. He had also been in financial difficulties. He had never earned a living from his work, and had lived on a small private income left to him by his wife. He had, however, Grieve believed, been speculating with his capital. He had also lent large sums of money to friends. Grieve had seen him earlier in the day of his death. Spenser had then told him that his affairs were in a bad way, and that he was seeing his solicitor the following day in an effort to salvage some of his losses. This statement was confirmed by the solicitor in question. Shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon of the day on which Spenser
had died, he had received a telephone call from Spenser, who asked for an appointment for the following day.

The revolver, reported Denton, was an old pin-fire weapon of French manufacture, and unregistered. Spenser could have come by it in a variety of ways. The same applied to the ammunition. Only one shot had been fired from the revolver. The markings on the bullet extracted from the dead man’s head showed that it had come from that particular revolver. The only distinguishing feature about the weapon was a series of marks near the muzzle which suggested that at some time a silencer had been fitted to it. There had been no silencer found in the flat. According to the medical report, the wound showed every sign of having been self-inflicted.