The Shop Window Murders

The shopwalker rushed for the door at the back, ejected the bricklayer from it, and closed the panel behind him. The constable, left alone in that scene of empty and now tragic grandeur, let his eyes wander round the ballroom, and suddenly brought them to rest on something that lay on the floor beside one couple of static dancers. He looked at that first searchingly, and then at a figure of a young woman, who sat huddled back in an empire chair, just concealed from the general front view by the dancers at rest already mentioned.

The young woman’s figure wore a balloonish skirt, covered with what looked like painted diagrams of the ‘Mander Hopper’. She wore over that a loose circular cloak which had something about it suggestive of a red parachute. On her head was fixed what looked like an aeroplane propeller with red silk trimmings, and over her face a black crepe mask, while her right hand wore a kid glove.

Taking the utmost precaution to disturb as little as possible, the constable walked over to the first object, and bent down to look at it. It was a Mauser automatic pistol. From it he approached the figure of the young woman. He looked at it hard. Then he extended his index finger, and gravely pressed it against the figure’s shoulder. With that he started, bit his lip, and seemed uncertain what to do. Finally he went back to stand by the sliding panel which formed the door to the ‘set’, and waited there for someone to come.

The manager of the store, Mr Robert Kephim, a smart man of middle-age with a very stolid cast of countenance, suddenly entered. He looked at the constable.

‘Mr Hay tells me there is something suspicious here, constable,’ he said. ‘I—’

And then he stopped, and looked very uncomfortable and unhappy. He was not the type of man to feel sick or faint, but the sight of his employer lying on his back there gave him a dreadful jolt.

‘Do you recognise him, sir?’ asked the constable.

Mr Kephim swore, then he nodded. ‘Why, what has happened? That is Mr Mander—I can’t understand it.’

The constable thought that a mild remark. ‘I think the gentleman has been shot,’ he said, ‘and I shouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t another one gone west too.’

Now Mr Kephim did really go pale, and made incoherent noises in his throat.

‘That young woman in the chair over there looks too natural to be true,’ went on the constable, ‘and there is a pistol on the floor. But we must wait till they send the inspector round before we have a look at that.’

Mr Kephim switched his eyes unwillingly to the woman in the chair. His eyes went from her head to her feet, and there remained, while they appeared to grow rounder and more glaring, and his body trembled to such a degree that the constable gripped him in a friendly way to lend him support.

‘Now then, sir, steady!’ he said.

‘The shoes—her shoes, said Kephim thickly. ‘But it can’t be—it can’t!’

A curious look came into the constable’s face. He stared at the man beside him, and put a sharp question.

‘Whose shoes, sir?’

Kephim gulped. ‘It must be a mistake. Of course it is. They aren’t really uncommon—they must sell hundreds of them.’

‘Very good, sir, but perhaps you would like to tell me to whom you are referring?’

Kephim shook his head. ‘Not just now. I may later. But I don’t think it will be necessary. How soon do you think your people can be here?’

‘As they are just round the corner, they may be here any minute,’ said the constable, and went over to look at the shoes in question.

They were not evening shoes, but walking-shoes of brown leather, with a strap decorated with a serpent whose eyes were the buttons. He was still looking when the panel slid back.

Inspector Devenish, who had just come in, accompanied by a detective-sergeant and the police-surgeon, was tall and thin. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a swarthy complexion, and might have passed as a southern Italian. Leaving the sergeant to close the panel behind them, he approached the constable, after a dry glance at the white-faced and trembling Mr Kephim.

‘What’s up here?’ he asked the constable, who saluted.

‘Looks like murder and suicide, sir,’ said the policeman.

He pointed out the body of Mr Mander, and then indicated the sitting figure of the young woman. Inspector Devenish bent over the body of the dead man, examined it cursorily, and then left it to the surgeon.

‘Now let’s see the other,’ he remarked to the constable, quite well aware that Mr Kephim had not concerned himself at all with Mr Tobias on the floor, but had continued to stare at the figure in the chair.

Devenish went over, and gently drew off the circular cloak and the mask from the huddled figure of the young woman. Then a thud behind him made him turn quickly. Mr Kephim had fainted, and fallen.

CHAPTER II

A SMALL army of officials had taken charge of the ballroom in the main bay of Mander’s Stores. There were many detective officers of various ranks, and two photographers. Leaving them to their routine work, Inspector Devenish had gone upstairs in the lift to Mr Mander’s flat, in the company of Mr Mander’s chief of staff.

Kephim still looked ill, but he was more composed now, and as they entered the lift, he was explaining in a low voice the arrangements his late employer had made to ensure privacy for his own apartments, and his comings and goings out of business hours.

‘He had a private door, and staircase at the back, inspector,’ he said; ‘there was a landing that gave access to a door in the hall of his flat. Then this lift takes you to another door, also opening in his hall, though at another side.’

By this time the lift had taken them to the top-floor, and they got out. Devenish stared at the door before him, then swept the floor with a swift glance.

‘I see. Now if we take it that Mr Mander did not descend into the shop during the weekend, was there any other means than this lift by which he could have been taken down?’

‘But he must have gone down,’ said Kephim, biting his lip. ‘The pistol down there—’

‘I know,’ said the other impatiently, ‘but were there other ways?’

Mr Kephim hesitated for a moment before he replied. ‘Yes, there are, of course, more than a dozen lifts used for parcels and goods from the store-rooms that are on this floor. But Mr Mander’s flat is cut off from that section by an unbroken wall.’

Devenish nodded, and rang the bell of the flat. In a minute the door was opened by a man-servant, a stout and dignified fellow of about fifty. Mr Kephim hastily explained the matter to the man, who looked as upset and frightened as any experienced man-servant can do, and hurriedly voiced his horror and regret.

Devenish nodded. ‘Very natural. Now take us to your master’s drawing-room, please. I shall interview you later, and also the other servants. How many are there?’

‘There’s Hames the footman, sir, Mr Mander’s valet, cook, two housemaids and a parlour-maid.’

‘It’s a large flat then?’

‘Yes, sir. There are ten rooms, and our rooms.’

‘The servants’ quarters are also quite cut off from Mr Mander’s part of the flat,’ explained Kephim.

‘Quite?’

‘I mean except for one communicating door, inspector.’

‘Very well. When I ring, I shall want to interrogate the staff one at a time.’

‘I understand, sir,’ said the butler, intelligently showing them into a vast and expensively furnished drawing-room, and left, closing the door gently behind him.

Devenish sat down, and motioned his companion to a chair.

Kephim sat down, biting his lip, and obviously very ill at ease. The inspector did not add to his embarrassment by staring at him, but surveyed the drawing-room from end to end as he put his first question.

‘Now, Mr Kephim, you saw what happened below. Mr Mander died from a shot-wound that entered the groin. The young woman had been stabbed in the back, with some thin-bladed, pointed weapon. Perhaps you will explain to me the reason why the discovery of the woman’s body proved a much greater shock to you than that of Mr Mander?’

Kephim’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I—we—were engaged to be married,’ he said in a very low voice. ‘A week ago,’ he added.

Devenish looked sympathetic. ‘I am sorry. That is indeed a tragic thing for you. Take your time, sir, and try, if you can, to let me hear a little about her. I won’t keep you any longer than I can help.’

Kephim pulled himself together with a visible effort. ‘Her name is—was Effie Tumour, inspector,’ he said. ‘She came here from Soutar’s, where she was second-buyer in the millinery. Mr Mander made her chief-buyer.’

Devenish had heard of Mander’s methods, and nodded. ‘Promotion, of course. I suppose he did not know her prior to making her this offer?’

‘I am sure he didn’t, inspector. She would have told me. I have known her for three years.’

‘She seems to have been a very handsome girl,’ said Devenish, looking at him thoughtfully.

Kephim coloured, and looked slightly indignant. ‘She wasn’t that kind of girl, and Mr Mander wasn’t that kind of man,’ he snapped. ‘Mr Mander was mad about aeroplanes. He has a kind of laboratory and workshop up here in the flat.’

‘I’ll have a look at that presently,’ replied the detective. ‘I am making no aspersions, remember. Only it seems rather odd that Mr Mander should have had two entrances, one from the rear.’

‘Three entrances,’ said Kephim; ‘there’s the stairs down from the flat roof, where the gyroplane landed the other day.’

‘Ah, the new gyrocopter,’ said Devenish. ‘But let us get back to Miss Tumour, if you please. In spite of Mr Mander’s absorption in aeroplanes, it is pretty obvious that she must have visited Mr Mander here during the weekend.’

‘She was up the river with me yesterday,’ replied Kephim, and drew a long shuddering breath. ‘I left her at eight o’clock at her flat.’

‘Where is that?’

‘No. 22 Capperly Mansions, Pulsey Street.’

‘Thank you. You left her at eight last night. After that she must have come here.’

‘I—yes. I suppose she must.’

Devenish got up, and crossed the room to ring the bell. The butler presented himself a minute later.

‘Did you wish to see me now, sir?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Did you admit anyone to this flat after, say, a quarter-past eight last night?’

‘No one whatever, sir. I am sure of that. Mr Mander had been at Gelover Manor, his country place, during the day. He came in at half-past seven, and dined at eight. He was alone, sir, and had no visitors that I know of last night. I never come in here after ten, unless I have special instructions.’

‘But you heard nothing during the evening, nothing during the night? Nothing out of the common I mean?’

The butler reflected. ‘Unless you mean that engine kind of noise, sir, I didn’t. But then this part is sound-proof from our part.’

‘What do you mean by the engine sound?’

‘Well, it was just like the noise that gyro thing made, sir; when it dropped on the roof, and there was so much fuss about it.’

Devenish nodded. Kephim stared.

The butler went on. ‘Do you want to see the rest of the staff now, sir? I may tell you, that when I lock the communicating door from our part at night, I keep the key under my pillow.’

‘Oh, you lock it from your side?’

‘Yes, sir, but Mr Mander generally shoots the bolts on his side as well.’

‘Awkward, if he lies late?’

‘Well, no, sir. He had a button by his bed, and if he presses it, a mechanic withdraws the bolts.’

‘Thank you. That will do. I’ll send my sergeant up presently to interview the staff.’

When the butler had gone once more, Devenish looked at Kephim. ‘I wonder, sir, if you are the gentleman who figures so well at Bisley every year?’

Kephim’s jaw dropped a little. ‘I am fond of rifle shooting; yes.’

‘I thought so, sir. Your name is not a common one. But now we’ll go through the flat, and end up on the roof.’

‘Do you believe anyone could have landed on the roof last night?’ Kephim demanded quickly, as he rose.

‘It seems to be a possible thing,’ said Devenish.

With Kephim looking on, he made a rapid but careful survey of the big drawing-room, then passed on to a dining-room that opened out of it. There was nothing in either to suggest a crime, or to hint that a woman had visited it lately. From there they entered the billiard-room, and a study. But Devenish did not linger long at any particular spot. His assistants, when they had finished below, would make a minute search, and photograph whatever was necessary for the exposure of finger-prints.

Then they visited four bedrooms, and ended up in a room, with two windows facing to the rear of the Store, one of which was fitted up as a workshop, and the other as a sort of store for metal and spare parts. In the workshop proper, there was a lathe, two benches, various band-saws for cutting metal, and an aero-engine of a rather unusual kind.

‘Is it possible that the engine noise the butler heard was made by one of these saws, or the lathe running?’ asked the detective.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied Kephim. ‘There are dynamos, I think they call them, in the basement. Mr Mander used power from them to work his machines here, but you wouldn’t hear them so far up.’

Devenish looked at a large switch-plate on the wall, ‘I suppose not. But what about this engine. It seems as if it had been strapped—fastened down for a bench test. It may have been that the butler heard.’

Kephim approached. ‘I don’t think so. Look here—there are three sparking-plugs missing. I know a little about cars, if not about aeroplanes.’

The inspector agreed. ‘Couldn’t fire without those, of course. Well, my people will go over this presently, and I think we had better have a look at the roof.’

A stairway led from the flat to the roof, the door let in to the panelling. It was unlocked, and Devenish put his handkerchief over the handle and turned it gently. Then he prepared to mount the stairs.

‘Seems to be the only way up,’ he remarked. ‘Anyone else wanting to get there would have to land from the sky.’

The flat roof of the Stores was a hundred and twenty yards long by fifty wide. It was covered with a rough-surfaced material, to enable an aeroplane to draw up more easily on landing, and, about thirty feet from the parapet at either end, there were banks of sand about two feet high, that had the appearance of emergency buffers.

‘By the way, Mr Kephim,’ said the inspector, as they walked slowly across the roof, ‘November is rather an off month for the river.’

Kephim looked at him resentfully. ‘I did not say we went boating. I meant up the Thames valley in my car. You can check that, I think.’

But Devenish seemed suddenly to have forgotten the point. He looked down at the roof, and raised his eyebrows.

‘Speaking as a layman, those look to me remarkable like the tracks of an aeroplane, which took off from a rather clayey field,’ he said.

Kephim stared at the tracks indicated. ‘That is odd. We have, as you know, had wonderfully dry weather for the past fortnight.’

Devenish went down on his knees, and carefully collected some of the dry clay with the blade of his pen-knife. When he had collected enough he put it in a little box he took from his pocket.

‘It will be interesting to know when that was deposited here,’ he said. ‘I think we shall go down to the workroom again.’

They descended, locked the door behind them this time, for the key was still in the lock, and visited the other room where were the stores of metal and spare aeroplane parts.

‘Ah, here we are,’ said Devenish, going to a large table in a corner, and pointing to two rubber-tyred wheels that lay there, ‘I take it that these belong to a gyrocopter, and we shall be able later to compare their tracks with those above. I shall have the whole of Mr Mander’s part of the flat locked up. No one must enter until we have given permission.’

‘I shall see to it,’ said Kephim. ‘We shall probably pay off his servants, later on, and close the flat.’

Devenish led the way out, locked the door of those two rooms, and put the keys in his pockets. He went back to the drawing-room, and now Kephim was beginning to show signs of restlessness.

‘Well, sir, I suppose, since you are here, you can tell me what your movements were from eight last night until you arrived this morning in your office?’ said the inspector.

Kephim sat down gloomily. ‘That’s an awkward question to answer,’ he said abruptly.

‘I am afraid I must ask it, sir,’ said Devenish calmly.

Kephim bit his lip. ‘I left Miss Tumour, and had supper at my flat in Baker Street—I have dinner in middle day on Sundays. I read a book until ten, and then sat and smoked, and tried to work out a crossword puzzle till eleven.’

‘And after that, sir?’

‘Well, that is the annoying part. I didn’t feel sleepy, so I went out at about a quarter-past eleven, and walked up to Regent’s Park. Mr Mander was a great man for novelties, and he had asked me to try to think of a novel advertising campaign. I always find my brain works best in the open air. At any rate, I did not get back till about two. I let myself in, and went to bed. My trouble is that I am afraid I did not see anyone who could identify me. I suppose that is what I should have had?’

‘It would seem better,’ Devenish replied mildly, ‘but think again, sir. Surely there was a policeman? They are more or less trained observers, and notice people at night. Or there might be lovers somewhere about. Take your time, sir.’

‘I saw various people, but no policeman,’ said Kephim, ‘but I did not see anyone look at me, and I was not always under a lamp.’

‘A policeman in the shadows may have seen you, sir. They do sometimes see without being seen. I’ll make inquiries, if you give me a sketch of your route.’

Kephim repeated from memory what he thought had been his route. He looked weary and dejected now, and Devenish was about to dismiss him, when someone rang the bell of the flat, and on opening it they saw the detective-sergeant who had accompanied Devenish to the Stores.

‘I beg your pardon, sir, but something rather important has been discovered,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the goods lifts. Seems to have traces of the murder.’

Kephim started. The inspector nodded. ‘We can’t apparently get to it from this floor, and I don’t want to examine it below. Have it sent up to the floor below this. Now Mr Kephim, how do we get to the floor below?’

‘We take this lift, inspector. One floor down, we can get along a passage to the goods-lift landing.’

They got into the lift together. The sergeant let them out at the next stop, and then descended in the lift to carry out his instructions.

The inspector was in plain-clothes, and no one took any particular notice of him as he walked at the manager’s side.

As they turned into the corridor, running parallel with the back of the building, and clear of the selling departments, Devenish turned to his companion.

‘I am sorry to speak of it again, sir, but could you tell me how Miss Tumour was dressed when she left you yesterday evening?’

Kephim was very pale, and began to tremble again, but he found voice to reply.

‘As—as we saw her just now, inspector.’

Devenish nodded. He did not say what both of them thought; that Effie Tumour might have gone almost straight from her flat to the flat above them—just waited, perhaps, for her lover to go out of sight!

CHAPTER III

AS they approached the lift, Devenish suddenly thought that it was sheer cruelty to take his companion with him any farther.

‘You have had a horrible morning, sir,’ he said to him, noticing how he now dragged his feet. ‘If I were you, I would go out and get some air; and have something to pull you together.’

He had already given instructions to the policemen on the various doors to follow any member of the staff who had been allowed to leave the premises, and felt quite safe in letting the manager go. Kephim thanked him weakly, and left. The detective advanced to where two subordinates stood before an open lift, in a recess at the back of the building.

One was his sergeant, who had brought it up to this floor, and he made way for Devenish, and pointed silently to a tiny spot of dry blood on the floor of the lift itself. The other man handed him a long and slender knife, the handle carefully wrapped in tissue paper, with the information that he had found it lying in the corner by the bloodstain.

Devenish examined the knife most carefully, then returned it. ‘Pack it with the other exhibits, Corbett,’ he said. ‘Where was this lift when you first saw it?’

‘It was down in the basement, sir.’

‘But it can be brought automatically to any floor, can’t it?—It can? Is it a very noiseless lift, or not?—Wonderfully quiet, eh?—Right. It is hard to say whether anyone was brought down in this, or simply came up in it.—Sergeant, I want to see the night watchman who patrols this section of the store. Send him here.’

The sergeant having gone off on this errand, Devenish knelt carefully on the floor inside, and fixed the exact position and dimensions of the blood-spot.

‘It seems to me a useful bit of evidence,’ he remarked, as he got up again, ‘but here is the watchman. Carry on! I am going to question him, but farther along the corridor.’

‘This is Mann, the night watchman, sir,’ said the sergeant.

Devenish nodded to the respectably dressed man of forty who had come up, noted that he looked like an ex-soldier, and motioned him to move a yard down the corridor.

‘Now, sergeant, I have a few jobs for you,’ he said. ‘First you must see the assistant-manager, and he must telephone to a director, if needs be, to have the Store closed. We can’t carry on with people trampling over the place; and if it remains open any longer, we shall have a drive of pressmen harrying us.’

‘But what of the assistants, sir?’ asked the sergeant.

‘My dear fellow, we can’t interrogate thirteen hundred odd men and women today. It doesn’t look like a job that one of them would do either. We must keep those in executive positions for the moment, but get the rest away, and the place closed.’

‘I’ll see to it, sir. Anything else?’

‘You must visit Mr Kephim’s flat in Baker Street, and Miss Tumour’s—I’ll give you both addresses. Find out all you can, and particularly when Miss Tumour left home last night. Also discover at what hour Mr Kephim went out and returned.’

‘Very well, sir.’

When the sergeant had gone, Devenish walked over to the waiting witness. ‘What exactly is your usual round when you patrol this section of the stores at night, Mann?’ he asked, while the ex-soldier kept a steady eye on his face.

‘I come on my shift at ten, sir,’ was the reply. ‘I walk round once, and see that it is all O.K. I have a box to sit in between rounds. They’re every hour, sir.’

‘How long does it take you to get round?’

‘Fifteen minutes. That is as I do it now, sir. But then I have only been here two months, and never seen anything suspicious.’

‘Then I may assume that you set out on your rounds at a quarter-past ten, a quarter-past eleven, a quarter-past—’

‘No, sir, it is an hour after finishing each round. I start the second round at a quarter-past eleven, and have it done by half-past eleven. I set out on the third at half-past twelve, and so on, sir.’

‘You are an ex-soldier, Mann—what branch?’

‘Finished as a sergeant, sir. I was an old regular, discharged unfit 1924.’

‘A man of method apparently, anyway,’ said Devenish. ‘Now, did you see or hear anything suspicious last night in the Store?’

He took out his note-book as he spoke.

‘Nothing at all, sir.’

‘No noise like a lift going up or down, no sound that might suggest an aeroplane engine?’