“That is the story that Doris Evans tells—and from which she has never varied. She strenuously denies that she ever struck at him with a hatpin in self-defence—a natural enough thing to do under the circumstances, though—and one which may well be the truth. In support of her story, a revolver has been found in the furze bushes near where the body was lying. It had not been fired.
“Doris Evans has been sent for trial, but the mystery still remains a mystery. If her story is to be believed, who was it who stabbed Captain Sessle? The other woman, the tall woman in brown, whose appearance so upset him? So far no one has explained her connection with the case. She appears out of space suddenly on the footpath across the links, she disappears along the slip, and no one ever hears of her again. Who was she? A local resident? A visitor from London? If so, did she come by car or by train? There is nothing remarkable about her except her height; no one seems to be able to describe her appearance. She could not have been Doris Evans, for Doris Evans is small and fair, and moreover was only just then arriving at the station.”
“The wife?” suggested Tuppence. “What about the wife?”
“A very natural suggestion. But Mrs. Sessle is also a small woman, and besides, Mr. Hollaby knows her well by sight, and there seems no doubt that she was really away from home. One further development has come to light. The Porcupine Assurance Co is in liquidation. The accounts reveal the most daring misappropriation of funds. The reasons for Captain Sessle’s wild words to Doris Evans are now quite apparent. For some years past he must have been systematically embezzling money. Neither Mr. Hollaby nor his son had any idea of what was going on. They are practically ruined.
“The case stands like this. Captain Sessle was on the verge of discovery and ruin. Suicide would be a natural solution, but the nature of the wound rules that theory out. Who killed him? Was it Doris Evans? Was it the mysterious woman in brown?”
Tommy paused, took a sip of milk, made a wry face, and bit cautiously at the cheesecake.
II
“Of course,” murmured Tommy, “I saw at once where the hitch in this particular case lay, and just where the police were going astray.”
“Yes?” said Tuppence eagerly.
Tommy shook his head sadly.
“I wish I did. Tuppence, it’s dead easy being the Old Man in the Corner up to a certain point. But the solution beats me. Who did murder the beggar? I don’t know.”
He took some more newspaper cuttings out of his pocket.
“Further exhibits—Mr. Hollaby, his son, Mrs. Sessle, Doris Evans.”
Tuppence pounced on the last and looked at it for some time.
“She didn’t murder him anyway,” she remarked at last. “Not with a hatpin.”
“Why this certainty?”
“A lady Molly touch. She’s got bobbed hair. Only one woman in twenty uses hatpins nowadays, anyway—long hair or short. Hats fit tight and pull on—there’s no need for such a thing.”
“Still, she might have had one by her.”
“My dear boy, we don’t keep them as heirlooms! What on earth should she have brought a hatpin down to Sunningdale for?”
“Then it must have been the other woman, the woman in brown.”
“I wish she hadn’t been tall. Then she could have been the wife. I always suspect wives who are away at the time and so couldn’t have had anything to do with it. If she found her husband carrying on with that girl, it would be quite natural for her to go for him with a hatpin.”
“I shall have to be careful, I see,” remarked Tommy.
But Tuppence was deep in thought and refused to be drawn.
“What were the Sessles like?” she asked suddenly. “What sort of things did people say about them?”
“As far as I can make out, they were very popular. He and his wife were supposed to be devoted to one another. That’s what makes the business of the girl so odd. It’s the last thing you’d have expected of a man like Sessle. He was an ex-soldier, you know. Came into a good bit of money, retired, and went into this Insurance business. The last man in the world, apparently, whom you would have suspected of being a crook.”
“It is absolutely certain that he was the crook? Couldn’t it have been the other two who took the money?”
“The Hollabys? They say they’re ruined.”
“Oh, they say! Perhaps they’ve got it all in a bank under another name. I put it foolishly, I dare say, but you know what I mean. Suppose they’d been speculating with the money for some time, unbeknownst to Sessle, and lost it all. It might be jolly convenient for them that Sessle died just when he did.”
Tommy tapped the photograph of Mr. Hollaby senior with his finger-nail.
“So you’re accusing this respectable gentleman of murdering his friend and partner? You forget that he parted from Sessle on the links in full view of Barnard and Lecky, and spent the evening in the Dormy House. Besides, there’s the hatpin.”
“Bother the hatpin,” said Tuppence impatiently. “That hatpin, you think, points to the crime having been committed by a woman?”
“Naturally. Don’t you agree?”
“No. Men are notoriously old-fashioned. It takes them ages to rid themselves of preconceived ideas. They associate hatpins and hairpins with the female sex, and call them ‘women’s weapons.’ They may have been in the past, but they’re both rather out of date now. Why, I haven’t had a hatpin or a hairpin for the last four years.”
“Then you think—?”
“That it was a man killed Sessle. The hatpin was used to make it seem a woman’s crime.”
“There’s something in what you say, Tuppence,” said Tommy slowly. “It’s extraordinary how things seem to straighten themselves out when you talk a thing over.”
Tuppence nodded.
“Everything must be logical—if you look at it the right way. And remember what Marriot once said about the amateur point of view—that it had the intimacy. We know something about people like Captain Sessle and his wife. We know what they’re likely to do—and what they’re not likely to do. And we’ve each got our special knowledge.”
Tommy smiled.
“You mean,” he said, “that you are an authority on what people with bobbed and shingled heads are likely to have in their possession, and that you have an intimate acquaintance with what wives are likely to feel and do?”
“Something of the sort.”
“And what about me? What is my special knowledge? Do husbands pick up girls, etc?”
“No,” said Tuppence gravely. “You know the course—you’ve been on it—not as a detective searching for clues, but as a golfer. You know about golf, and what’s likely to put a man off his game.”
“It must have been something pretty serious to put Sessle off his game. His handicap’s two, and from the seventh tee on he played like a child, so they say.”
“Who say?”
“Barnard and Lecky. They were playing just behind him, you remember.”
“That was after he met the woman—the tall woman in brown. They saw him speaking to her, didn’t they?”
“Yes—at least—”
Tommy broke off. Tuppence looked up at him and was puzzled. He was staring at the piece of string in his fingers, but staring with the eyes of one who sees something very different.
“Tommy—what is it?”
“Be quiet, Tuppence. I’m playing the sixth hole at Sunningdale. Sessle and old Hollaby are holing out on the sixth green ahead of me. It’s getting dusk, but I can see that bright blue coat of Sessle’s clearly enough. And on the footpath to the left of me there’s a woman coming along. She hasn’t crossed from the ladies’ course—that’s on the right—I should have seen her if she had done so. And it’s odd I didn’t see her on the footpath before—from the fifth tee, for instance.”
He paused.
“You said just now I knew the course, Tuppence. Just behind the sixth tee there’s a little hut or shelter made of turf. Anyone could wait in there until—the
right moment came. They could change their appearance there. I mean—tell me, Tuppence, this is where your special knowledge comes in again—would it be very difficult for a man to look like a woman, and then change back to being a man again? Could he wear a skirt over plus-fours, for instance?”
“Certainly he could. The woman would look a bit bulky, that would be all. A longish-brown skirt, say a brown sweater of the kind both men and women wear, and a woman’s felt hat with a bunch of side curls attached each side. That would be all that was needed—I’m speaking, of course, of what would pass at a distance, which I take to be what you are driving at. Switch off the skirt, take off the hat and curls, and put on a man’s cap which you can carry rolled up in your hand, and there you’d be—back as a man again.”
“And the time required for the transformation?”
“From woman to man, a minute and a half at the outside, probably a good deal less. The other way about would take longer, you’d have to arrange the hat and curls a bit, and the skirt would stick getting it on over the plus fours.”
“That doesn’t worry me. It’s the time for the first that matters. As I tell you, I’m playing the sixth hole. The woman in brown has reached the seventh tee now. She crosses it and waits. Sessle in his blue coat goes towards her. They stand together a minute, and then they follow the path round the trees out of sight. Hollaby is on the tee alone. Two or three minutes pass. I’m on the green now. The man in the blue coat comes back and drives off, foozling badly. The light’s getting worse. I and my partner go on. Ahead of us are those two, Sessle slicing and topping and doing everything he shouldn’t do. At the eighth green, I see him stride off and vanish down the slip. What happened to him to make him play like a different man?”
“The woman in brown—or the man, if you think it was a man.”
“Exactly, and where they were standing—out of sight, remember, of those coming after them—there’s a deep tangle of furze bushes. You could thrust a body in there, and it would be pretty certain to lie hidden until the morning.”
“Tommy! You think it was then.—But someone would have heard—”
“Heard what? The doctors agreed death must have been instantaneous. I’ve seen men killed instantaneously in the war. They don’t cry out as a rule—just a gurgle, or a moan—perhaps just a sigh, or a funny little cough. Sessle comes towards the seventh tee, and the woman comes forward and speaks to him. He recognises her, perhaps, as a man he knows masquerading. Curious to learn the why and wherefore, he allows himself to be drawn along the footpath out of sight. One stab with the deadly hatpin as they walk along. Sessle falls—dead. The other man drags his body into the furze bushes, strips off the blue coat, then sheds his own skirt and the hat and curls. He puts on Sessle’s well-known blue coat and cap and strides back to the tee. Three minutes would do it. The others behind can’t see his face, only the peculiar blue coat they know so well. They never doubt that it’s Sessle—but he doesn’t play Sessle’s brand of golf. They all say he played like a different man. Of course he did. He was a different man.”
“But—”
“Point No. 2. His action in bringing the girl down there was the action of a different man. It wasn’t Sessle who met Doris Evans at a cinema and induced her to come down to Sunningdale. It was a man calling himself Sessle. Remember, Doris Evans wasn’t arrested until a fortnight after the time. She never saw the body. If she had, she might have bewildered everyone by declaring that that wasn’t the man who took her out on the golf links that night and spoke so wildly of suicide. It was a carefully laid plot. The girl invited down for Wednesday when Sessle’s house would be empty, then the hatpin which pointed to its being a woman’s doing. The murderer meets the girl, takes her into the bungalow and gives her supper, then takes her out on the links, and when he gets to the scene of the crime, brandishes his revolver and scares the life out of her. Once she has taken to her heels, all he has to do is to pull out the body and leave it lying on the tee. The revolver he chucks into the bushes. Then he makes a neat parcel of the skirt and—now I admit I’m guessing—in all probability walks to Woking, which is only about six or seven miles away, and goes back to town from there.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tuppence. “There’s one thing you haven’t explained. What about Hollaby?”
“Hollaby?”
“Yes. I admit that the people behind couldn’t have seen whether it was really Sessle or not. But you can’t tell me that the man who was playing with him was so hypnotised by the blue coat that he never looked at his face.”
“My dear old thing,” said Tommy. “That’s just the point. Hollaby knew all right. You see, I’m adopting your theory—that Hollaby and his son were the real embezzlers. The murderer’s got to be a man who knew Sessle pretty well—knew, for instance, about the servants being always out on a Wednesday, and that his wife was away. And also someone who was able to get an impression of Sessle’s latch key. I think Hollaby junior would fulfil all these requirements. He’s about the same age and height as Sessle, and they were both clean-shaven men. Doris Evans probably saw several photographs of the murdered man reproduced in the papers, but as you yourself observed—one can just see that it’s a man and that’s about all.”
“Didn’t she ever see Hollaby in Court?”
“The son never appeared in the case at all. Why should he? He had no evidence to give. It was old Hollaby, with his irreproachable alibi, who stood in the limelight throughout. Nobody has ever bothered to inquire what his son was doing that particular evening.”
“It all fits in,” admitted Tuppence. She paused a minute and then asked: “Are you going to tell all this to the police?”
“I don’t know if they’d listen.”
“They’d listen all right,” said an unexpected voice behind him.
Tommy swung round to confront Inspector Marriot. The Inspector was sitting at the next table. In front of him was a poached egg.
“Often drop in here to lunch,” said Inspector Marriot. “As I was saying, we’ll listen all right—in fact I’ve been listening. I don’t mind telling you that we’ve not been quite satisfied all along over those Porcupine figures. You see, we’ve had our suspicions of those Hollabys, but nothing to go upon. Too sharp for us. Then this murder came, and that seemed to upset all our ideas. But thanks to you and the lady, sir, we’ll confront young Hollaby with Doris Evans and see if she recognises him. I rather fancy she will. That’s a very ingenious idea of yours about the blue coat. I’ll see that Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives get the credit for it.”
“You are a nice man, Inspector Marriot,” said Tuppence gratefully.
“We think a lot of you two at the Yard,” replied that stolid gentleman. “You’d be surprised. If I may ask you, sir, what’s the meaning of that piece of string?”
“Nothing,” said Tommy, stuffing it into his pocket. “A bad habit of mine. As to the cheesecake and the milk—I’m on a diet. Nervous dyspepsia. Busy men are always martyrs to it.”
“Ah!” said the detective. “I thought perhaps you’d been reading—well, it’s of no consequence.”
But the Inspector’s eyes twinkled.
Twelve
THE HOUSE OF LURKING DEATH
“What—” began Tuppence, and then stopped.
She had just entered the private office of Mr. Blunt from the adjoining one marked “Clerks,” and was surprised to behold her lord and master with his eye riveted to the private peephole into the outer office.
“Ssh,” said Tommy warningly. “Didn’t you hear the buzzer? It’s a girl—rather a nice girl—in fact she looks to me a frightfully nice girl. Albert is telling her all that tosh about my being engaged with Scotland Yard.”
“Let me see,” demanded Tuppence.
Somewhat unwillingly, Tommy moved aside. Tuppence in her turn glued her eye to the peephole.
“She’s not bad,” admitted Tuppence. “And her clothes are simply the latest shout.”
“She’s perfectly lovely,??
? said Tommy. “She’s like those girls Mason writes about—you know, frightfully sympathetic, and beautiful, and distinctly intelligent without being too saucy. I think, yes—I certainly think—I shall be the great Hanaud this morning.”
“H’m,” said Tuppence. “If there is one detective out of all the others whom you are most unlike—I should say it was Hanaud. Can you do the lightning changes of personality? Can you be the great comedian, the little gutter boy, the serious and sympathetic friend—all in five minutes?”
“I know this,” said Tommy, rapping sharply on the desk, “I am the Captain of the Ship—and don’t you forget it, Tuppence. I’m going to have her in.”
He pressed the buzzer on his desk. Albert appeared ushering in the client.
The girl stopped in the doorway as though undecided. Tommy came forward.
“Come in, mademoiselle,” he said kindly, “and seat yourself here.”
Tuppence choked audibly and Tommy turned upon her with a swift change of manner. His tone was menacing.
“You spoke, Miss Robinson? Ah, no, I thought not.”
He turned back to the girl.
“We will not be serious or formal,” he said. “You will just tell me about it, and then we will discuss the best way to help you.”
“You are very kind,” said the girl. “Excuse me, but are you a foreigner?”
A fresh choke from Tuppence. Tommy glared in her direction out of the corner of his eye.
“Not exactly,” he said with difficulty. “But of late years I have worked a good deal abroad. My methods are the methods of the Sûreté.”
“Oh!” The girl seemed impressed.
She was, as Tommy had indicated, a very charming girl. Young and slim, with a trace of golden hair peeping out from under her little brown felt hat, and big serious eyes.
That she was nervous could be plainly seen. Her little hands were twisting themselves together, and she kept clasping and unclasping the catch of her lacquered handbag.
“First of all, Mr. Blunt, I must tell you that my name is Lois Hargreaves. I live in a great rambling old-fashioned house called Thurnly Grange. It is in the heart of the country. There is the village of Thurnly nearby, but it is very small and insignificant. There is plenty of hunting in winter, and we get tennis in summer, and I have never felt lonely there. Indeed I much prefer country to town life.