‘Good-evening, Chief Inspector!’ said Pershore punctiliously. ‘Superintendent Hinckley informed me that he would be despatching you to the scene of the crime. I trust –’
‘Well, there’s no need for you to start talking like a newspaper report!’ said Hemingway irritably. ‘What he told you was that he’d be sending me along, because nobody ever heard him talk in that silly style – not outside the witnessbox, that is!’ He put his hat down on the table under the gilded mirror, and struggled out of his overcoat. A glance round the eau-de-nil hall out of his bright, birdlike eyes made him nod approvingly. ‘Very classy!’ he said. ‘Where can we go where we shan’t be interrupted?’
‘I have made the dining-room my headquarters, Chief Inspector. The staff has not yet cleared away the refreshments intended for the party that was earlier assembled –’
‘You couldn’t have hit on a better place,’ said Hemingway, walking into the dining-room, and warming his hands before the electric radiator. ‘I daresay we shall need some refreshment before we’re through. Now, what’s all this about, Pershore?’
Pershore, clearing his throat rather pompously, glanced at his voluminous notes, and replied: ‘I should say, Chief Inspector, that it is a clear case. At first sight, it may seem impossible that the crime could have been committed under the circumstances in which it was done; but, pursuant upon my interrogation of several of the persons present in the house, I reached the con clusion that this is a case that pre sents few difficulties –’
‘What you want to do is to hire a hall, and give a series of lectures on police work,’ interposed Hemingway. ‘You’ll probably make a lot of money: people will pay to listen to anything! I wouldn’t, of course, but that’s because I have to listen to you, and even the Department wouldn’t expect me to pay for doing what I can’t help. Now, you stop trying to annoy me, and tell me what’s been happening here without any trimmings!’
The Inspector glared at him, but the exigencies of discipline prevented him from uttering a retort. He said stiffly: ‘The house is rented by a Mrs Lilias Haddington, of whom nothing is known. She resides here with her daughter, Miss Cynthia Haddington, and a staff of six persons. There is also a young woman who is her secretary. She was on the premises at the time, but does not reside here. The murdered man was a Mr Daniel Seaton-Carew, address Haughton House, Jermyn Street. I understand him to have been a close friend of Mrs Haddington. He was one of forty-four persons invited to take part in some sort of a Bridge-game, and had previously dined here in company with Mrs and Miss Haddington, Miss Birtley, who is the secretary, Lord Guisborough, and a Mr Harte. There were two other guests, acting as scorers, one of whom is Dr Theodore Westruther, who was the first to inspect the body. The murdered man was called to the telephone, which is situated in the room known as the boudoir shortly after eleven pm; and some minutes later, nobody being able to state with certainty how many, Mrs Haddington saying about ten, and Miss Birtley putting it rather higher, and no one else admitting to any knowledge of the exact hour at which Mr Seaton-Carew was called to the telephone, which is, of course, possible, if they hadn’t happened to look at the clock –’
‘Take a breath!’ advised Hemingway.
The Inspector found that he had lost the thread of his narrative, and was forced to refer to his notes.
‘The murdered man was called to the telephone,’ Hemingway prompted.
‘Some minutes later,’ resumed Pershore coldly, ‘Mrs Haddington requested Sir Roderick Vickerstown to go down to the boudoir, and remind Mr Seaton-Carew that they were all waiting for him. Sir Roderick complied with this request, and discovered the body of the murdered man as you will see for yourself, Chief Inspector. I come now to the persons whose movements during the period when the murder may be assumed to have been committed are unaccounted for.’
‘No, you don’t. First things first is my motto! I’ll see the body before I get any more confused than what I am already. Take me to the boudoir you talk of !’
‘Of course, it is just as you wish, Chief Inspector. I will lead the way,’ said Pershore, suiting the action to the word. ‘Sergeant Bromley arrived shortly before yourself, and is engaged in photographing any finger-prints in the room which may have a bearing on the crime, but nothing, I need hardly say, has been touched since I was called in, and arrived at 11.53 pm.’
Since it would have been extremely improper for anything to have been touched before the arrival of a representative of Scotland Yard, this unnecessary assurance exasperated the Chief Inspector. He cast a fulminating look at Inspector Pershore’s back, but was interrupted before he could utter the words trembling on his tongue.
‘Whisht, now, whisht!’ said Inspector Alexander Grant soothingly.
‘I don’t say you’re not right,’ retorted Hemingway, ‘but if you’re telling me to shut up, which I think you are, I’ll put in an adverse report about you, my lad!’
The Inspector smiled in the way that gave him an odd resemblance to one of the shy stags of his own Highlands, and said no more. They had by this time mounted the stairs to the half-landing. Inspector Pershore opened the door into Mrs Haddington’s sitting-room, and stood aside for Hemingway to enter.
There were several people in the room. All that remained of Dan Seaton-Carew was seated in the chair beside the telephone-table in the angle between the door and the first of the two long, curtained windows, his face most horribly distorted, and with two strands of picture-wire protruding at the back of his neck. His head had fallen forward on his breast; both his arms hung slackly beside him; one leg was stuck stiffly out before him, its foot under the fragile table which held the telephone; the other bent, so that its foot was against the leg of the chair.
The Chief Inspector observed him without blenching, glanced round the room, and said cheerfully: ”Evening! No, I mean, good-morning! How’s the kid, Tom?’
The photographer grinned at him. ‘Going on fine, sir, thank you. Out of quarantine this week.’
‘That’s good.’ Hemingway turned from him, and surveyed the still figure in the chair. ‘Well, well!’ he said, scrutinising every detail. ‘The things people will get up to!’
He spoke in an absent tone, and all but one of his subordinates waited in respectful silence, well-aware that whatever inanities he might utter, his quick brain was anything but inane.
‘The murder, as you will see, Chief Inspector,’ said Pershore, ‘was committed by means of a length of ordinary picture-wire, twisted about the neck of the victim by means of a tourniquet, supplied by some instrument unknown. As I see it, the murderer held one end of the wire, and this instrument, or implement, in one hand, say, right, quickly passed the other round the neck of the victim, standing behind him, of course, caught this end under the thumb of the left hand, so that the implement was held, as it were, between the two strands of the wire, and gave the said implement a couple of twists, or maybe more, thus producing death by asphyxiation within –’
‘Och, hasn’t he eyes in his head?’ interrupted Grant. ‘Will you not hold your peace, you silly man?’
‘– a matter of seconds!’ ended Pershore, swelling with indignation. ‘You’ll observe, Chief Inspector, that the wire is twisted hard up against the neck of the murdered man, and again just below where the strands part, showing that between these two places some implement has been inserted, and later withdrawn.’
‘Found?’ asked Hemingway, who did not appear to be paying much attention.
‘It has not so far been discovered, Chief Inspector,’ owned Pershore.
Hemingway’s glance flickered round the room. ‘Nothing here likely to be suitable. Might be almost anything, and won’t do us any good if we did find it. I fancy I see this bird leaving his prints on it! Gone over the wire, Tom? You won’t get anything off it, of course, but we’ve got to try everything.’ He nodded to the photo g rapher. ‘Now then, I want a shot of the whole of this corner of the room first, taking it from about where you are.’
For t
he next few minutes, he was fully occupied with the photographer; and when this worthy, having taken all the photographs which were demanded, began to pack up his impedimenta, he stood still for a moment or two, still studying the unpleasant scene.
‘The ambulance, Chief Inspector, is waiting to remove the body, if you have finished,’ said Pershore.
‘Is this exactly how he was found?’ Hemingway asked. ‘Nothing been moved?’
‘According to the evidence given by Sir Roderick Vickerstown and Dr Westruther, which I have no reason to doubt, neither of them touched the body at all. I questioned the doctor very particularly, thinking he might have tried to resuscitate the murdered man, but he states that he saw at a glance that life was extinct; and he did not disturb the body. Later, the Divisional Surgeon, of course –’
‘Yes, I’m not worrying about him. Nothing in the room been touched?’
‘Nothing, barring the telephone-receiver, which I found hanging on the end of the wire, having apparently been dropped by the murdered man. It was replaced,’ said Inspector Pershore grandly, ‘under my supervision, and has since been photographed for finger-prints.’
‘All right. Have the body taken away,’ said Hemingway. ‘Did Dr Yoxall say – No, never mind! I’ll see him myself.’
The Inspector relayed the order to remove the body, saw that Hemingway had pulled the heavy brocade curtain away from the window behind the telephone-chair, and said: ‘There’s no doubt the murderer was concealed behind that curtain, Chief Inspector.’
‘There’s a lot of doubt,’ responded Hemingway tartly. ‘And if you go on calling me Chief Inspector every time you open your mouth, you and me will fall out. It’s getting on my nerves. I don’t say the murderer wasn’t concealed: he may have been; but from the look of things it seems highly probably he wasn’t concealed at all.’
‘You mean, Chief – you mean that the victim was not expecting the murderer to attack him?’ said Pershore slowly.
‘Well, I don’t myself expect to be murdered when I sit down to a game of Bridge with a party of friends. It may have happened just like you think, but to my mind, the chair’s too close to the window for anyone to hide himself behind the curtain without attracting his victim’s attention when he came out. If there wasn’t a rustle, anyone sitting there, at an angle to the window, would be bound to see the curtain move, out of the corner of his eye. In which case, he’d have had time to have put up a bit of a struggle, at the very least. No sign of any struggle here, not a vestige. A nice, neat job, that’s what I call it.’
‘It is a cruel, wicked murder!’ said Inspector Grant severely.
‘You only say that because you don’t like strangling cases. All murders are wicked. I’ve seen a lot more cruel than this one, and so have you.’ He watched the shrouded body of Seaton-Carew carried out of the room on a stretcher, and said: ‘That’s better: now we can get on! What I want to know now, Pershore –’
‘The suspected persons are being detained –’
‘What I want to know now,’ repeated Hemingway, ‘is why this character, who lives in Jermyn Street, gets rung up in somebody else’s house. In fact, is it established that he was rung up?’
‘Naturally that point had occurred to me, Chief Inspector. It appears that the murdered man himself arranged to have the call put through to this house, and mentioned the matter when at dinner, in the hearing of the five other people seated at the table. The butler states that he was not in the diningroom at the time, and knew nothing about the arrangement. I’ve got no reason to disbelieve him so far,’ said Pershore darkly, ‘but he’s not a good witness.’
‘I daresay you didn’t handle him right: there’s a knack in examining butlers. So, on the face of it, only five people knew this call was coming through? Quite enough to be going on with too. Who answered the ‘phone? The butler?’
‘Miss Birtley states that she answered it, in this room. It was a Personal Call for the murdered man, from Doncaster.’
‘Have it traced, Sandy.’
‘At the time when it came through, the murdered man was playing at one of the tables in the library, which is the room directly underneath this one. There were eight other tables in the drawing-room, which occupies the whole of the first floor; and barring Mrs Haddington, and one of the guests, whom I will come to in due course, no one left that room during the period in question. We checked up carefully on that, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it, for they were all playing this Bridge-game, and nobody could have left the room without the three other people at his table remembering it. The names and addresses were taken, of course, but I saw no reason to detain anyone but this Sydney Butterwick I was speaking about.’
‘Quite right. Go on!’
The Inspector once more consulted his notes. ‘Miss Birtley’s story is that when she came out of this room, with the intention of summoning Mr Seaton-Carew to the telephone, Mrs Haddington had come out of the drawing-room on to the landing above this. Mrs Haddington, according to Miss Birtley, showed annoyance when she heard the call was for Mr Seaton-Carew, but told Miss Birtley to go and fetch him up to take it. In this, Mrs Haddington concurs. She then told Miss Birtley to keep an eye on things while she went up to her room, which is on the second floor. Miss Birtley then went down to the library, where the murdered man was playing –’
‘Look, I thought you’d shaken off that habit!’ objected Hemingway. ‘Stick to the man’s name! If you’re going to talk about the murdered man playing Bridge you’ll give me the creeps!’
‘Very well, Chief Inspector. What I was about to say when interrupted was, where the – Mr Seaton-Carew was playing Bridge at one of the tables. At the same table were Miss Guisborough, who was his partner, and is twin sister to Lord Guisborough, also in the library at the time; Mr Godfrey Poulton; and a foreign lady, calling herself Baroness –’ He drew a breath, and enunciated painstakingly: ‘Baroness Rozhdesvenskiy!’
‘How much?’
The Inspector displayed his printed note. ‘I got her to spell it, and the way I said it is the way she did.’
‘It may be, but if you take my advice you won’t say it any more, or you’ll have people thinking you’ve got something the matter with you. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the Baroness. Don’t tell me! She’s a Russian, and talked you silly! Let’s get back to Miss Birtley’s story!’
‘Miss Birtley states that a moment or two after Mr SeatonCarew left the library, during which time she emptied a couple of ashtrays, and replaced them, she went up to the drawing-room, picking up on the way a tray containing a whisky-and-soda, which she had put down on the chair outside this door when she originally answered the call. This she carried to a Colonel Cartmel, in the drawingroom, setting it down on a small table at his elbow. The Colonel more or less corroborated this, saying that he did not remember Miss Birtley doing it, but found the glass there when next he looked round. He was playing the hand at the time, and Miss Birtley did not speak to him. The other people at the table seem to think they remember seeing Miss Birtley put the glass down, but they are what I should call vague about it. Miss Birtley states that she lingered for a minute or two in the drawing-room, saw that one of the cigarette-boxes was nearly empty, and went downstairs to fetch up a fresh supply from a cupboard in the dining-room. In the dining-room, she states that she found Mr Butterwick, drinking a whisky-and-soda, supplied to him by the butler. She did not exchange any words with him, but got out the cigarettes, and went back to the drawing-room. That,’ said Inspector Pershore, ‘is her story.’
‘And why have you got it in for her?’ asked Hemingway, who had been watching him closely.
‘I hope I have not got it in for anyone, Chief Inspector, but I should describe Miss Birtley as a very unsatisfactory witness. What is more, I have reason to think that she was concealing part of the truth from me. She was hostile, for one thing. Very unwilling to answer my questions, and very anxious to make me believe she hadn’t had time to have murdered Mr Seaton
-Carew – which it’s my belief she had, only one person corroborating her story that she lingered for a minute or two in the library when Seaton-Carew had left it. And I didn’t set much store by that, because it was as plain as a pikestaff he’d have corrob orated anything she chose to say! The rest of the people in the library say they don’t remember, that she was in and out a good many times during the evening. Also, I had occasion to ask her if she noticed whether Mr Butterwick seemed at all agitated. She said she didn’t notice anything about him that was unusual, but the butler says nobody could have failed to have noticed it, because he looked very queer and jumpy, didn’t seem to pay much attention to what was said to him, and drank off a couple of doubles before you could say Jack Robinson.’