The Silk Stocking Murders

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 has 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.

At last Roger fired his broadside. It was a nice, unexpected broadside, and Roger had been meditating it at intervals for three glasses. In the middle of a conversation about sweet-peas and how to grow them, Roger remarked very casually:

‘So you think Lady Ursula was murdered too, do you, Moresby?’

CHAPTER VI

DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM, OF SCOTLAND YARD

IT is given to few people in this world to see a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard start violently; yet this was the result which rewarded Roger’s broadside. With intense gratification he watched the Chief Inspectorial countenance shiver visibly, the Chief Inspectorial bulk tauten, and the Chief Inspectorial beer come within an inch of climbing over the side of the glass; and in that moment he felt that the past was avenged.

‘Why, Mr Sheringham, sir,’ said Chief Inspector Moresby, with a poor attempt at bland astonishment, ‘whatever makes you say a thing like that?’

Roger did not reply at once. Now that he had got over the slight numbness that followed the success of his little ruse (he had hoped perhaps to make the Inspectorial eye-lid quiver slightly, but hardly more), he was filled with a genuine astonishment of no less dimensions than that which Moresby was so gallantly attempting to simulate. In attributing Lady Ursula’s death to murder he had not so much been drawing a bow at a venture as deliberately making the wildest assertion he could think of, in order to shock the Inspector into giving away the much more insignificant cause of his presence at the inquest. But, perhaps for the first time in his life, the Chief Inspector had been caught napping and given himself away, horse, foot and artillery. The very fact that he had been on his guard had only contributed to his disaster, for he had been guarding his front and Roger had attacked him in the rear.

In the meantime Roger’s brain, jerking out of the coma into which the Inspector’s start had momentarily plunged it, was making up for lost time. It did not so much think as look swiftly over a rapid series of flashing pictures. And instantly that which had before been a mystery became plain. Roger could have kicked himself that it should have taken a starting Inspector to point out to him the obvious. Murder was the only possible explanation that fitted all those puzzling facts!

‘Whew!’ he said, in some awe.

The Chief Inspector was watching him uneasily. ‘What an extraordinary idea, sir!’ he observed, and laughed hollowly.

Roger drank up the rest of his beer, looked at his watch and grabbed the Chief Inspector’s arm, all in one movement. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Lunch time. You’re lunching with me.’ And without waiting for a reply he began marching out of the place.

The Chief Inspector, for once at a decided disadvantage, was left with no option but to follow him.

Quivering all over, Roger hailed a taxi and gave the man the address of his flat.

‘Where are we going, Mr Sheringham?’ asked the Chief Inspector, whose countenance bore none of the happily expectant look of those about to lunch at another’s expense.

‘To my rooms,’ replied Roger, for once economical of words. ‘We shan’t be overheard there.’

The groan with which the Chief Inspector replied was not overheard either. It was of the spirit. But it was a very substantial spiritual groan.

In an extravagant impulse not many months ago Roger had walked into the Albany, fortified by a visit to his publisher’s and the news of the sales of his latest novel, and demanded rooms there. A set being fortunately vacant at the moment, he had stepped straight into them. Thither he led the helpless Chief Inspector, now gently perspiring all over, thrust him into a chair, mixed him a short drink in spite of his protests in which the word ‘beer’ was prominent, and went off to see about lunch. During the interval between his return and the serving of the meal, he regaled his victim with a vivid account of the coffee-growing business in Brazil, in which he had a young cousin.

‘Anthony Walton, his name is,’ he remarked with nonchalance. ‘I believe you met him once, didn’t you?’

The Chief Inspector had not even the spirit left to forget his earlier promise and retort in kind.

Let it not be thought that Chief Inspector Moresby shows up in an unworthy light in this episode. Roger had him in a cleft stick, and Moresby knew it. When police inquiries are in progress that necessitate the most profound secrecy, the smallest whisper of their existence in the Press may be enough to destroy the patient work of weeks. The Press, which may be bullied on occasions with impunity, must on others be courted by the conscientious Scotland Yard man with more delicate caution than ever lover courted the shyest of mistresses. Roger knew all this only too well, and only too well Chief Inspector Moresby knew that he knew it. But this time the situation was not amusing at all.

In the orthodox manner Roger held up any discussion of the topic at issue until the coffee had been served and the cigarettes were alight, just as big business men always do in the novels that are written about them (in real life they get down to it with the hors d’œuvres and don’t blether about, wasting valuable time). ‘And now,’ said Roger, when that stage had arrived, ‘now, Moresby, my friend, for it!’

‘For it?’ repeated Chief Inspector Moresby, still game.

‘Yes; don’t play with me, Moresby. The boot’s on the other foot now. And what are we going to do about it?’

The Chief Inspector tidily consumed the dregs in his coffee-cup. ‘That,’ he said carefully, ‘depends what we’re talking about, Mr Sheringham.’

‘Very well,’ Roger grinned unkindly. ‘I’ll put it more plainly. Do you want me to write an article for The Courier proving that Lady Ursula must have been murdered—and not only Lady Ursula, but Elsie Benham and Unity Ransome as well? Am I to call on the police to get busy and follow up my lead? It’s an article I’m simply tingling to write, you know.’

‘You are, sir? Why?’

‘Because I’ve been following up the Ransome case since the day after the death,’ said Roger with emphasis, but without truth.

In spite of himself, and the traditions of Scotland Yard concerning amateurs, the Chief Inspector was impressed. Nor did he take any trouble to hide it. ‘You have, sir?’ he said, not without admiration. ‘Well, that was very smart of you. You tumbled to it even then that it was murder?’

‘I did,’ said Roger, without blenching. ‘Ah, now we’re getting on. You agree that it was murder, then?’

‘If you must know,’ said the harrassed Chief Inspector, seeing nothing else for it, ‘I do.’

‘But you didn’t realise it as soon as I did?’ pursued the unblushing Roger. ‘You didn’t realise it, in fact, till Lady Ursula’s case came along?’

‘It’s only suspicion, even now,’ replied Moresby, adroitly avoiding a direct answer.

Roger drew for a few moments at his cigarette. ‘I’m sorry Scotland Yard’s tumbled to the idea of murder,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I’d been looking on this as my own little affair, and I’ve been putting in some hard work on it too. And you needn’t think I’m going to drop out just because you’ve stepped in. I’m determined to get to the bottom of the business (I’ve something like a personal interest in it, as it happens), with or without the police. And at present I’m far and away ahead of you.’

‘How’s that, Mr Sheringham?’

‘Well, to take only one point, do you know Unity Ransome’s real identity?’

‘Not yet, we don’t, no,’ the Chief Inspector had to confess.

‘Well, I do,’ said Roger simply.

There was another pause.

‘What’s in your mind, Mr Sheringham?’ Moresby broke it by asking. ‘There’s something, I can see.’

‘There is,’ Roger agreed. ‘It’s this: I want us to work together on this case. I wanted to at Ludworth last summer, but you wouldn’t. Now I’m in a much stronger position. Because don’t forget that I can help you very considerably as your assistant. I don’t mind your looking on me as an assistant,’ he added magnanimously.

‘You could help me, could you, Mr Sheringham?’ the Chief Inspector meditated. ‘Now I wonder exactly how?’

‘No, you don’t,’ Roger retorted. ‘You know perfectly well. In the first place there’s the material I’ve got together already. But far more than that, there’s the question of the murderer. The circumstances of Lady Ursula’s death make it quite obvious to me that the murderer is a man of good social position, or, at the least, somebody known to her (all Lady Ursula’s friends weren’t of good social position, I admit). Well, now, this is going to be a very difficult case, I think. We’re dealing, I take it, with a homicidal maniac who is probably quite sane on all other subjects. There are only two ways of getting him: one is to catch him red-handed, and the other is to get into his confidence and attack him from behind (and we needn’t have any sporting scruples in this case). Do you agree so far?’

‘All that seems reasonable enough,’ Moresby conceded.

‘Quite so. Well, as to the first method, does one usually take homicidal maniacs of the sexual type red-handed? You people at the Yard ought to know, with your experience of Jack the Ripper. And I’m assuming that our man isn’t quite such a dolt as Neil Cream, who almost invited the police to come and investigate him. Then only the second method remains. Well, now, Moresby, I don’t want to be offensive, but are you the fellow to get into the confidence of such a man? Let’s look at it quite reasonably. We narrow our suspicions down, say, to an old Etonian, who is a member of, perhaps, the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Do you think you could induce a man like that to confide anything further to you than the best thing for the three-thirty? You can’t join his club, you see, and get at him that way, can you?’

‘I see your point all right, Mr Sheringham,’ Moresby smiled. ‘Yes, there’s a good deal in that. But of course we’ve got plenty of people at the Yard who could do all that. What about the Assistant Commissioner? He was at Eton himself.’

‘Do you really imagine,’ said Roger with fine scorn, ‘that a man who has committed at least three murders is going to confide in the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard? Don’t pretend to be puerile, Moresby. You know well enough that nobody even remotely connected with Scotland Yard is going to be any good for that. It’s just there where my position is so useful to you. I’m not connected with Scotland Yard. I’m known to the general public simply as a writer of fiction. Why, the man we’re looking for has probably never seen even a copy of The Courier in his life.’

‘Well, as I said, there’s plenty of sense in all this, Mr Sheringham. And if I do refuse to take you on as an assistant, I suppose you mean you’ll blow the gaff and do your best to queer our pitch?’

‘I shall hold myself free to write what I choose about these cases,’ Roger corrected with dignity.

‘Um!’ The Chief Inspector tapped absently on the table and appeared to be ruminating. ‘I’m in charge of the investigation at present, of course. But we’re not by any means certain yet that they are murders. There’s a lot in that stuff you wrote in The Courier the other day about suggestion acting on a certain type of mind, you know.’

‘Ah! So you read my articles, do you?’ said Roger, childishly pleased. ‘But Lady Ursula’s wasn’t that type of mind, you know. That’s the whole point. Still, we’ll go into that later. Are you or are you not going to take me on?’

‘We’re not allowed to do anything like that, not without permission, you know,’ the Chief Inspector demurred.

‘Yes, and I know equally well that you’ll get the permission in this case for the asking,’ Roger retorted, without modesty.

The Chief Inspector ruminated further. ‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘I’m not saying that you might not be able to help me, Mr Sheringham, in this particular case. Quite a lot. And certainly you’re no fool,’ he added kindly. ‘I thought that at Ludmouth, though you were a bit too clever there. But it was really smart of you to tumble to murder in the Ransome case, before those others. I’ll admit that it never occurred to us at all. Yes, very well, then, sir; we’ll consider that settled. I’ll apply for permission to take you in with us as soon as I get back to the Yard.’

‘Good man!’ Roger cried in high delight. ‘We’ll open a bottle of my precious ’67 brandy to celebrate my official recognition.’

Over the reverent consumption of a couple of glasses of the ’67, Roger made known to his new colleague the result of his researches into the case of Unity Ransome, first stipulating that her real identity should not be made public unless circumstances absolutely necessitated it; he was resolved to use any influence he had to save that unhappy family from further trouble. The Chief Inspector agreed readily enough and, now that it was no longer a case of rivalry but of collaboration, complimented his companion ungrudgingly on his astuteness. He had himself already paid a couple of visits to the Sutherland Avenue flat, but had made little progress from that end of the complicated case.

‘What put Scotland Yard finally on the suspicion of murder?’ Roger asked, having told all he knew.

‘Something beyond your own knowledge, Mr Sheringham,’ replied the Chief Inspector. ‘On examining Lady Ursula’s body, our surgeon reported that there were distinct signs of bruises at her wrists. I had a look at them myself, and though they were faint enough, I’m ready to swear to my belief that her hands had been tied together at some time. Well, she wouldn’t have tied her own hands, would she?’

Roger nodded. ‘And the other cases?’

‘Nothing was noticed at the time, but we’re taking steps to find out.’

‘Exhumation? Yes. Well now, Moresby, let’s hear your theory about it all.’

‘Theory, sir? Well, I suppose we do have theories. But Scotland Yard works more on clues than theories. The French police, now, they work on theories; but they’re allowed a good deal more latitude in their inquiries than we are. They go in a lot for bluff, too, which we can’t use. All we can do is to follow up the pointers in a case, and see where they lead to.’

‘Well, let’s examine the pointers, then. What do you consider we’ve got to work on, so far?’

Inspector Moresby looked at his watch. ‘Good gracious, sir,’ he exclaimed, in artless surprise, ‘I’d no idea it was as late as this. They’ll be wondering whatever’s happened to me. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr Sheringham. I must get back to the Yard at once.’

Roger understood that not until official permission had actually come through would the Chief Inspector discuss the case with him further than to pick his brains. He smiled, well enough content with the result of his lunch-party.

CHAPTER VII

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE CASE

SOON after eight o’clock that same evening, in response to a telephoned hint from Roger, Chief Inspector Moresby again visited the Albany, official permission to discard his reticence at last duly obtained. Roger welcomed him with a choice of whisky or beer, pipe, tobacco or cigarettes, and they settled down in front of the fire, pipes alight and a pewter tankard at each elbow, to go into the case with real thoroughness.

‘By the way, have you seen The Evening Clarion?’ Moresby remarked first of all, pulling the paper in question from his pocket. ‘You journalists do give us a lot of trouble, you know.’ He handed it over, marking a certain paragraph with his thumb.

The paragraph was at the end of an account of the inquest on Lady Ursula that morning. Roger read: ‘From the unobtrusive presence among the spectators at the back of the court of a certain highly placed official at Scotland Yard, it may be argued that the police are not altogether satisfied with the case as it stands at present. Certainly there seem to be many obscure points which require clearing up. It must not be supposed that the said official’s interest in the proceedings necessarily means that Scotland Yard definitely suspects foul play, but it is not too much to assume that we have not yet heard the last of this tragic affair.’