‘Easily!’ responded Hemingway, in his friendliest tone. ‘And what was it you were telling Mrs Haddington about Lord Guisborough?’
‘Nothing against him!’ Miss Spennymoor assured him. ‘Only knowing Maisie like I did – that was his mother, you know, and if ever there was a Lad – ! I couldn’t hardly fail to know the ins and outs of it all. Because I was dresser to all the girls when she first took up with Hilary Guisborough, and I don’t know how it was, but I always had a fancy for Maisie, and she for me, and I often used to visit her.’
‘After he married her?’ suggested Hemingway.
‘Oh, and before he did! They used to live in a little flat, Pimlico way, because at that time he’d got some kind of a job. He lost it later, of course, but that was Hilary all over! Well, as the girls used to say, what could you expect of a man with a soppy name like that? Still, I never heard Maisie complain, never once, and, give him his due, he married her within a month of her twins being born, which made it all right, only naturally it isn’t a thing anyone would want talked about. Well, is it? Maisie used to feel it a lot, because, say what you like, legitimated isn’t the same as being born in wedlock, not however you look at it! Maisie used to say to me that if there was one thing she couldn’t bear it was having Hilary’s grand relations look down on her twins, which is why I’m sorry I ever mentioned the matter, because they none of them knew anything about Maisie, not till Hilary wrote and told his people he’d been married for years, and got a couple of kids. They behaved very properly, by all accounts, having Maisie and the twins down to stay, and all, but it was a great strain, and she told me wild horses wouldn’t drag her there again, and nor they ever did, because she died before they invited her again. Well, they always say there’s a silver lining to every cloud, don’t they? But I never ought to have mentioned it to anyone, and I hope you won’t repeat it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing for Lance, and him a lord, to have people saying he’d had to be legitimated!’
This anecdote, though of human interest, was not felt to have contributed anything of marked value to the problem confronting the Chief Inspector. ‘Though, mind you, Sandy,’ he said, as, having parted from Miss Spennymoor, he entered the boudoir, ‘I’ve always thought it was a bit unfair, the way they just stamp Legitimated on birth certificates. Doing a thing by halves, is what I call it. I daresay Lord Guisborough doesn’t like it much, but try as I will I can’t fancy that as a motive for murdering Mrs Haddington. What’s more, from what I saw of that sister of his, she’d fair revel in having been born on the wrong side of the blanket, and she seemed to me to be the master-mind of that little party.’ He glanced round the walls of the boudoir, which were hung with a few dubious water-colours, mounted and framed in gilt. None of them was of sufficient size or weight to have made it necessary to hang them on hooks from the picture-rail. Hemingway pulled on a pair of wash-leather gloves, and began to make a systematic tour, lifting each picture away from, the wall, and peering to see how it was hung. At the third masterpiece – The Isles of the West, from which Inspector Grant had averted his revolted gaze – he paused. He cast one triumphant glance at his assistant, and lifted the picture down, and held it with its back to the assembled company. A piece of string had been knotted to the rings screwed into it: virgin string, as everyone saw at a glance, with not a speck of dust upon it.
‘A Chruitheir! ‘ uttered Grant, under his breath.
‘Very likely!’ said Hemingway. ‘You can get busy on this one, Tom!’ He bent to examine the string, and suddenly raised his head. ‘String!’ He turned, and jabbed a finger at the desk. ‘Top right-hand drawer, Sandy! Also a pair of large scissors in a leather holder!’
‘I remember.’ The Inspector pulled open the drawer, handed the ball of string to his superior, and, more circumspectly, using his handkerchief, picked up the scissors, in their case, and stood waiting for Sergeant Bromley to take them from him.
‘Same string – and that means nothing!’ said Hemingway, comparing the ball with the string attached to the picture. ‘Ordinary string, used for tying up parcels.’ He drew forth a length of tarnished picture-wire from his pocket, uncoiled it, slid the ends through the rings on the back of the frame, lightly twisted them where the strands were already a little unravelled, and observed the result with a critical eye. ‘As near the same length as the string as makes no odds!’ he remarked. ‘That seems to settle that! Got anything, Tom?’
‘Yes, but I can’t tell you yet if the prints are the same as any we took on Tuesday, sir. I’ll have to take ‘em back to the Department.’
Hemingway nodded. ‘Do that now. Rush it!’ He rehung the picture on the wall, and turned, holding out a gloved hand for the scissors. Inspector Grant gave them to him, and he drew them gently out of their coloured leather sheath. ‘Of course, you can’t say with any certainty how a pair of large scissors comes by its scratches,’ he remarked. He handed the scissors to Bromley. ‘Go over them carefully, Tom!’
‘I will, of course, sir,’ said the Sergeant, receiving them tenderly. ‘But if you can see your way through this case – well!’
The Chief Inspector, his gaze travelling slowly round the room, vouchsafed no response to this. His mind was plainly elsewhere; and it was not until a few moments after the Finger-print unit had departed that Grant ventured to address him.
‘If the murder was committed with the wire from that picture, it was not Poulton that did it!’ he said.
Hemingway’s eyes came to rest on his face. ‘Oh, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Why not?’
‘Och, would he take down the picture and remove the wire from it under the poor lady’s very eyes?’ demanded the Inspector.
‘Certainly not. What makes you so sure she was in this room with him the whole time he was here?’
The Inspector stared at him. ‘But – !’ He was silent, suddenly, frowning over it.
‘Going a bit too fast, Sandy. All we know is what Thrimby and Poulton himself told us. According to Thrimby, he arrived here at about 6.25; according to both of them, he left at a quarter-to-seven. That gave him twenty minutes, during which time only he and Mrs Haddington knew what happened. We have only his word for it they were together in the boudoir throughout. I admit, it doesn’t seem likely she’d have left the room, but she might have: we don’t know.’
‘Well,’ said the Inspector slowly, ‘supposing she left him to fetch something – it would not have given him much time, would it?’
‘No, it wouldn’t, and one would say he’d have wanted a bit of time to find that string – if it was that string and those scissors which were used! I don’t say I think it was Poulton, but I do say it’s still a possibility, and one we won’t lose sight of. Setting him aside for the moment, who are we left with? I don’t think it was Miss Birtley: I’ve considered her case carefully, and I don’t see how she could have got to Earl’s Court and back in the time. There’s young Butterwick, who dashed out of the house, leaving his stick behind him; and there’s Lord Guisborough, who also went off in a rage, slamming the door behind him. Neither was actually seen to leave the premises; either, I suppose, could have concealed himself somewhere – in the cloakroom, say – until the coast was clear, and then slipped up to this room, and waited for Mrs Haddington to come in. Look at those windows! They’re both in slight embrasures, and you see how the thick curtains would shut off the whole embrasure. Plenty of room for a man to stand behind them, and I’ll bet they were drawn by tea-time. Now tell me what possible reason either of those two can have for murdering Mrs Haddington, and we shall both be happy! And don’t say Guisborough did it because she flung his birth in his teeth, and he was touchy, because I don’t like tall stories, and never did!’
‘It could not have been the doctor?’ Inspector Grant said doubtfully.
‘You’ve got him on the brain!’
‘It’s the way he keeps on turning up!’ apologised Grant.
‘If you mean he was here in the middle of the day, there’s no di
spute about that: he admitted he was. Are you asking me to believe he lurked in the house till nearly seven o’clock at night? Talk sense! I saw him myself this afternoon!’
‘Ach, I did not think it was he! I have wondered if Butterwick too was in this drug-racket, and yet I do not think it. That he is an addict himself is possible, but I saw none of the signs. Moreover, he was wearing his evening-dress when I found him, and he would not have had time to have gone home, let alone have changed his clothes – if he was in the Opera House for the first ballet.’
‘Well, unless he’s a better actor than what I take him for, I should say he was there in time for the first ballet. I know that type! So that leaves us with Lord Guisborough, who either murdered Mrs Haddington because she didn’t want her daughter to marry him – funny thing, that! I should have thought a chap with a handle to his name was just what she was after! – or because Miss What’sher-name had told her his parents’ wedding was just a trifle late.’
The Inspector shook his head. ‘It will not do. He is a foolish, and maybe a violent young man, but he would not murder anybody for such silly reasons as those. Besides, it was known that he was coming to see Mrs Haddington! Do you tell me he came with murder in his head?’
‘At the moment, I’m not telling you anything. He wouldn’t have had to have had it in his head, though. We do know they had a row, for she told Thrimby not to let him into the house again. If he did it, it was something that happened at that interview which made him decide to bump her off. In which case, he dashed downstairs, grabbed his coat, slammed the door, and nipped up to the boudoir again, which he knew was empty, and –’
‘He had no time!’ the Inspector ejaculated. ‘Mrs Haddington rang to have him shown out, and she herself came to the head of the first flight of stairs!’
‘Yes, because his High and Mightiness took such a time to answer the bell! Plenty of time for anyone who knew the house! And then she went up to the girl’s room, and Thrimby went down to the basement, and while they were both nicely out of the way, his lordship got to work on the picture. There’s only one thing wrong with that reconstruction: there’s no motive! Pity! The more I think about it the more I like it! I mean, it would have been quite neat, wouldn’t it? We were bound to think the same man committed both murders, and there he was alibi’d up to the ears for the first one, never even under suspicion! Of course, my trouble is I don’t know enough about the fun and games they get up to in this precious Russia of his. If I was to discover that they go around murdering their mothers-in-law before ever they get engaged –’
‘Nach ist thu! ‘ interrupted the Inspector severely. ‘Will you not whisht now? You have only the butler’s word for it she did not favour the young lord!’
‘No, I haven’t! The Blonde Bombshell told me so this very day, let alone the row he had with Mrs Haddington, and her telling Thrimby never to let him in again!’
‘That is true,’ admitted the Inspector. ‘I would not have thought it of the cailleach! Was it a Duke she meant to get for her daughter?’
‘According to what I’ve managed to gather it was Terrible Timothy she had her eye on, if “the calyack” means Mrs Haddington, which I take it it does! It gives me a better idea of her than I had before, but I agree with you it isn’t what you’d have expected of her. What I can’t make out is why she kept on inviting Lord Guisborough to the house, if she didn’t like his politics. You can’t suppose he ever made any secret of them! Perhaps she suddenly found out that he hadn’t got any money to speak of or –’ He stopped, reminding his subordinate irresistibly of a terrier winding a rat. ‘Good God, Sandy!’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve missed something!’
‘I will not, then,’ said the Inspector soothingly.
‘You keep quiet, and whatever you do don’t start spouting Gaelic at me! You’re putting me off !’ said Hemingway. ‘What did that lawyer-chap say? She rang him up about repairs and they had a little chat after that about the Marriage and Legitimacy Acts. Then she tells Lord Guisborough she’d like to see him, and he comes, and – Here, the man I want is Terrible Timothy!’
‘Och, what will you be wanting him for?’ demanded the Inspector protestingly.
‘I want him because he’s the handiest lawyer I can think of !’ replied Hemingway.
Mr Harte was discovered in the library, arguing with his betrothed on the propriety of her accepting his mother’s urgent invitation to her to seek asylum in Berkshire. Miss Birtley was moved by the news that Lady Harte, hearing her story, had been seized with a crusading fervour, and was not only determined to spread the mantle of her approval over her but was already formulating stern, and rather alarming, plans to bring her late employer to belated justice; but she maintained that until such time as Miss Pickhill had coerced or persuaded her niece to retire with her to Putney, her duty chained her to Charles Street.
‘Hallo, here’s Hemingway!’ said Timothy as the Chief Inspector walked in. ‘Let’s put it up to him!’
Appealed to by both parties, the Chief Inspector firmly refused to become embroiled in matters beyond his ken.
‘Cowardly, very cowardly!’ said Timothy. ‘All right, my girl, you’ll have my Mamma descending upon you, that’s all! What brings you back again, Hemingway?’
‘Never you mind what brings me back, sir! Just you tell me what you know about the Legitimacy Act!’
‘The questions the police ask one!’ marvelled Timothy. Behind the amusement in them, his eyes were keen, and speculative. Keeping them on Hemingway’s face, he said: ‘It is an Act, Chief Inspector, passed in 1926, legalising the position of children who were born out of wedlock, but whose parents afterwards married one another.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Hemingway. ‘What it means is, that as long as you do get married, your children are legitimate, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, within certain limits,’ agreed Timothy.
‘What limits, sir?’
‘Well, neither parent must have been married to someone else at the time of the child’s birth, for instance; and legitimated offspring are debarred from inheriting titles, or the estates that go with them. Otherwise –’ He broke off. ‘I seem to have uttered something momentous!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hemingway. ‘You have!’
Twenty
Well,’ said Mrs James Kane, replenishing her husband’s cup, ‘I’m thankful to have you back again, anyway!’
Mr James Kane, luxuriously ensconced by his own fireside once more, bit into his third crumpet, and said somewhat thickly: ‘Cuckoo!’
‘Not,’ said Mrs Kane, with dignity, ‘because I was in the least anxious about you, but I thought I should either have to come to town myself, or go mad, if it went on much longer! All I had to go on were those lurid reports in the papers, and a letter from your mother which I couldn’t make head or tail of !’
‘I rang you up every night!’ said Mr Kane indignantly.
‘Yes, darling, and every time I asked you anything, you said you couldn’t talk over the telephone!’ retorted the wife of his bosom, with some asperity.
‘Well, I couldn’t. I did tell you there wasn’t anything for you to worry about!’
‘That was when I looked out the trains to London,’ said Mrs Kane grimly. ‘And if it hadn’t been for Cook having to go home to nurse her mother, I should have come up, let me tell you!’
‘Oh, my God, has the Cook left?’
‘She’s coming back. At least, that’s what she says. Anyway,
Nanny and I can manage! Never mind about that! What actually happened? Tell me all about it!’
‘I don’t think there’s anything much to tell, really,’ said the maddening male reflectively. ‘It was easy to see Hemingway never suspected young Timothy for as much as a split second, which is what mattered, as far as we’re concerned. I only stood by because of Beulah. At one time it did look a bit as though she might have had a hand in the affair, and I thought, if that was so, Timothy would need a bit of support
.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Kane, schooled into patience by thirteen years of marriage.
‘Of course, he couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with Mrs Haddington’s murder,’ pursued Mr Kane, licking his buttery fingers in a very vulgar way. ”Matter of fact, Hemingway did a pretty neat bit of detection, taken all round. I should think, myself, that Guisborough must have been a bit unhinged. I mean, from what Timothy told me about the way he nattered about the Equality of Man, you wouldn’t have expected him to have cared two hoots whether he had a title or not! What’s more, if he’d stopped to think, he must have realised that the whole thing might have come out at any moment! I mean, you never know when you may have to produce your birth-certificate, do you? He might have wanted to apply for a passport, or something – though, I suppose, as a matter of fact, that wouldn’t have mattered much, because the authorities wouldn’t have been worrying about whether he was legitimate or only legitimated! Still – ! Young Timothy put Hemingway on to that, all unbeknownst. Then Hemingway got Guisborough’s finger-prints, as soon as he heard the prints on the picture-frame didn’t belong to any of the suspects for the first murder, and after that it was all U.P.! Silly young fool seems to have come badly unstuck when he was arrested. Nasty business, whichever way you look at it! Main spring of both murders, one nit-witted blonde!’