Case for Three Detectives Page 2

  The tone in which he said this was strange. His voice was hollow, almost fierce. There was no apology in it. It was as though he were going to give me a chance to defend myself against some serious imputation. Then he seemed to grow distant again. He stared into the fire.

  “You may,” he said at last without looking at me, “you may be able to put my mind at rest. I hope you can.” I waited. Then abruptly he turned to me again. “Have you noticed anything in this household? Anything going on which should not go on ? Anything … improper?”

  I thought of David Strickland, secretively coming out of Mary Thurston’s room. But I smiled, and said cheerfully, “Good Lord, no, Mr. Rider. I’ve always considered it a model household.”

  He was so quaint and eccentric that I forgot to blame him for the indiscretion of his query. You could blame him no more than you would blame a child for discussing his hosts’ concerns. But I was greatly relieved when just then the door opened, and Sam Williams came in, so that the talk became more natural.

  Dinner, I remember, was a cheerful, almost an hilarious meal. We all ate with real enjoyment and Thurston was excited about some hock he had bought at an auction sale of a neighbouring estate. Stall handled it with reverent efficiency and it was certainly excellent.

  It was irritating, though, when Mary Thurston had left us, to have the Vicar sitting morosely at the table, primly refusing the port, and making it impossible to talk more freely than we had done in the presence of our hostess. Not that the conversation after dinner at the Thurstons’ was ever particularly crude—it was not. But young Strickland could tell stories nimbly, in spite of his rather weighty character, and perhaps it was just because Mr. Rider was there that I for one was peeved by the silence forced on him. I was relieved when someone suggested bridge, though neither Thurston nor I were particularly fond of cards.

  Several of us were tired that evening. I was not at all surprised when quite early young Strickland got up and apologetically proposed to go to bed. He had got up very early that day, he said, and felt fagged out.

  “Whisky and soda before you go?” suggested Thurston from the card-table.

  But Strickland unexpectedly refused. “No, thanks awfully,” he said, “I really think I’ll turn in right away.” And he nodded to us, and left the room.

  I did not notice the time then, but I have since calculated from later events that it was about half-past ten.

  The next to get up was Alec Norris. He had threatened to break up the game at the end of the next rubber. He had been playing with Thurston, Williams and me, while the Vicar and Mary Thurston had been talking with some intentness where they sat together on the settee.

  “You would like to join the game, Mrs. Thurston,” the Vicar said, “and it is quite time I started to walk home.”

  “It’s not very far, Rider,” Thurston remarked politely, though I don’t think anyone was sorry.

  “No. I shall go through the orchard. Be home in five minutes” And protesting his gratitude for a pleasant evening, he took himself off.

  We did play one more rubber, but it was not very successful, for Mary Thurston was a poor player, and Sam Williams, who was her partner, was inclined to take his bridge seriously. And we finished it just as the clock’ in the hall struck eleven.

  “No,” Mary Thurston said, “no more, really. I’m making poor Mr. Williams miserable. Besides, eleven o’clock is my bedtime.”

  That was quite true. Like a little child, Mary Thurston had her fixed hour for retiring, and if she stayed up beyond it, did so always with a sense of guilt. I could remember her often enough in the past standing up when she had heard that chime, kissing her husband, and bidding us good night with an ingenuous, even rather babyish smile.

  She left the three of us, Williams, Thurston and me, to pour ourselves out a very welcome whisky.

  Looking back on that night I remember with gratitude that from then until the … until the tragedy, I remained with the other two. None of us stirred from the room. Our staying there talking saved us, as you will see, from a great deal of interrogation and unpleasantness. Once I remembered a letter which I had left in my overcoat pocket, and thought for a moment of fetching it. I actually crossed the room and opened the door, but fortunately at that moment Williams asked me some question which it interested me to answer, and I went no farther. I have cause enough to be glad of it.

  Before leaving us, Mary Thurston had turned on the wireless, and though none of us was exhilarated by the efforts of a popular dance band to provide entertainment for Great Britain, we did not actually turn it off. It made an uninteresting undertone to our conversation. Since I was on my feet, however, I thought of switching it off, and should have done so before sitting down. But I paused to answer Williams’s question, and it was during that pause that we heard the first scream.

  So much of the subsequent enquiry depended on time, that I should like to have been able to fix this precisely, but I can do no more than say that it must have been at about a quarter past eleven. I had closed the door again, and was returning to the other two by the fireside.

  Now you must know I have no wish to chill your blood or emphasize the gruesome aspects of this affair. But I do ask you to imagine the effect of that interruption. We were in the cosy firelight of an autumn evening, quietly sipping our whisky, in a cheerful friendly house. We knew each other and the household well. There had been nothing to arouse even the faintest presentment of evil or misfortune. We were normal English people in a very ordinary house. And suddenly, from just over our heads it seemed, came that long, horrifying woman’s cry of terror. It was the shock of it which seemed to stun me. Not the actual sound or its implications, but the sudden shock.

  Almost before we had jumped to our feet there was another, and a third followed it, but the third was the most hideous of all, for it died slowly out of our hearing. By that time we had made for the staircase. Thurston was first. “Mary!” he shouted, and in spite of his weight he bounded upstairs like a frightened boy.

  CHAPTER 3

  I DO not know how many seconds it took us to reach the door of Mary Thurston’s room. But that it was seconds, and not minutes, not even one minute, I am certain. At the door stood Alec Norris. But the door was locked.

  At first we threw our shoulders against it. Then Williams, pressing first the top, then the bottom of it, shouted, “Bolted! In two places. Smash the panel in, Thurston.”

  Thurston was still heaving his weight blindly at the door, and it was I who picked up a solid wooden chair which stood on the landing, and drove it through the upper panel. And through the jagged gap I caught a glimpse of the room, and of something in it which was horrible, and yet which gave me none of the astounded shock which the screams had given me. I suppose they had made me expect it. For what I saw was the dim outline of Mary Thurston’s face on a pillow which was more crimson than white, and I knew at once that she had been murdered.

  Before we could enter, however, it was necessary to smash in a lower panel as well, for the door was tall, and, as Williams had said, bolted at top and bottom. I myself leaned through the broken woodwork and pulled back those bolts. And lest it should be doubted later, let me say quite clearly now that each was driven home securely. Indeed, it took me several seconds to get the lower one back at all.

  When I had done that, and while I was standing up to turn the handle, Thurston pushed past us into the room. And as he did so I became aware that we had been joined by two others. My whole conscious attention was concentrated on the room before us, so that it was only as it were from the corner of my mind that I perceived Strickland standing there beside us, and Fellowes on the staircase which rose from beyond Mary Thurston’s door to the second floor. At what moment they had arrived I did not, do not, know. But I am certain that neither was there when we had first reached the landing, and that neither had appeared when I stepped back to pick up the chair. In other words, neither was on the scene within a minute of the screams, though both had arrive
d soon after that.

  And now we were peering in at that doorway. We stood there, the four of us, as though we had been warned to respect the room. We stood, and saw what we saw, and watched Thurston’s movements.

  There was only a reading-lamp alight in the room, but it was not too heavily shaded for us to see the whole interior. Across the bed lay Mary Thurston, fully dressed. But it was the pillow on which her head lay which drew our horrified stare, the pillow and her throat. For the pillow, as I had already seen, was stained hideously with scarlet, and across her throat, her fat white throat, there was a still ghastlier scar. But once again I do not wish to be unnecessarily harrowing. It is sufficient to say that when Thurston told us in a choking voice that she was dead, we did not speak or move, for we had known what his words must be.

  Sam Williams kept his head. “Don’t move,” he said to us who stood in the doorway. “He must be in there.” And he reached for the light switch, and snapped it down. This, however, had no result, and I was conscious of a slight relief. Any further light on that scene would have been too merciless.

  But I think it was the fruitless click of that electric light that turned my attention from the realization of Mary Thurston’s death, to the necessity of discovering her murderer. In the agonizing seconds during which we had stared at what lay on the bed, I had thought how dreadful, how tragic, as though it had been an accident. But when Williams pressed the switch and the room became no lighter, something woke me to see that this … this horror was human work, and that its agent must be discovered.

  Still, it could only have been two or three minutes at the most after the time of the first scream. By no means could the murderer have escaped.

  “Stay in the doorway, Townsend,” Williams said again, and began to search the room.

  I stood with Strickland and Fellowes behind me, watching him. He crossed first to the window, and peered out, and up and down, then went to a large cupboard, built into the wall beside the fireplace, and searched it quickly. I saw him look up to the roof of it, and down in the farthest recess. He crossed to the fireplace, and briefly examined it. He looked undei he bed, and at the mattresses; he opened a wardrobe.

  “The window again,” I shouted suddenly. Though there were two windows in the room, only one of them was made to open, and towards this Williams hurried again. It is true that I had already seen him look out of it, but some instinct had made me beg him to do so once more.

  “Impossible,” he said. “There’s a twenty-foot drop. And,” he looked out again, “ten feet to the window above.”

  Williams continued his search as though oblivious of Thurston, who was standing beside the bed. Very low sounds like buried sobs came from him, and he did not move. Presently Williams had finished his first investigation.

  “If there’s any place of concealment in that room,” he said, “it is a specially constructed one.”

  That was true enough. I had been eager to point out any possible space left unexamined by Williams, if he gave me an opportunity. I suppose that the hunting instinct is still strong in us, and though I never moved from the door my eyes and mind were occupied with the search. There was nowhere left to probe in the room itself.

  “Fellowes, help me move this carpet,” Williams said suddenly. “We’ll leave nothing to chance.”

  They pulled up the carpet and examined the floorboards. They looked over every foot of wall space. They re-examined the cupboard, the floor of the cupboard, and the upper part of it. The bed was a single one, light, and high above the floor. They scrutinized the boards beneath it. They went again to the fireplace, as though to see whether it might not conceal a means of escape. They moved the furniture and looked behind it.

  Williams was white, and his teeth were clenched as though he were repressing emotion. “It’s unbelievable,” he said to me; then, in a lower voice, “It’s unnatural.” And I was inclined to agree with him.

  By this time, or during this time, we had been joined by Stall. Norris and Fellowes both said afterwards that he had arrived before Williams had first pushed up the window, but I did not notice him come. He was, incidentally, the only one of us, apparently, who was already in pyjamas. He wore an ugly woollen dressing-gown, and seemed to be shivering, though the evening could not have been called cold.

  Presently Williams, whose lawyer’s mind was best equipped for the situation, said, “We must get a doctor. And the police. There’s no point in staying here. Better search the grounds. I’ll telephone.”

  Then Thurston joined us. “Have you ‘phoned, Sam?” he asked. His voice was low and tired. “Doctor? And everything?”

  “Just going to,” said Williams, and patted his arm.

  And then—perhaps you will be shocked—the first thing we did was to have a stiff whisky. Williams poured one out for Dr. Thurston, who had sunk into a chair in the lounge, and gave one each to Fellowes and Stall. Alec Norris’s teeth rattled on the rim of his glass as he drank. Strickland had not spoken yet, but drank greedily.

  “Look here, Townsend,” said Williams, “you take Norris, Strickland and Fellowes and make a thorough search of the grounds.”

  “Certainly,” I said, though I had little hope of discovering anything. But I felt I could no longer bear the atmosphere of that house. The thought of Thurston, the rotund and cheerful, looking puffy and drawn, and Alec Norris with his white face and thin trembling frame, was too much for me. The man I most respected was Williams, who never lost his head, and handled the hideous situation admirably.

  In the hall were Fellowes and Stall, and we decided to take the chauffeur with us, leaving Stall in case he should be wanted.

  “What about the women-servants?” I asked. “Do they know?”

  It had struck me that it would be cruel to let Enid, the young parlourmaid, go into that room unprepared.

  “Yes, sir. The parlourmaid was upstairs while we were at the door, and I sent her down to the kitchen,” Fellowes said.

  “Well, stay with her and the cook,” I told Stall. “And don’t let either of them leave the kitchen.”

  “Very well, sir,” said the butler.

  We had just arranged our routes when Williams called me from the little cloakroom off the hall to which he had gone to telephone for the police. “I think the ‘phone’s out of order,” he said, “or the wires have been cut. I can’t get an answer, anyway. Better tell Fellowes to take the car and fetch Dr. Tate and the Sergeant at once. As quick as he can.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll have another try at this thing. But it seems pretty dead,” he said, returning to the cloakroom.

  So Fellowes went off to the village, and Strickland, Norris and I out into the grounds. We had decided that Norris was to go round by the stable-yards, Strickland was to make an outer circuit, in the remote hope that he might find someone, or something, among the trees which would help us. You will understand that we had little confidence in this chase of ours into the open air. But the fact that Mary Thurston’s door had been bolted, her windows inaccessible, and her room empty, already seemed to us so fantastic and inexplicable that we no longer behaved, or tried to behave, logically.

  I could realize little more than that a murder had been committed by some means which seemed to me almost supernatural. I was so much distressed, and so much at a loss, that any course of action which had been suggested to me as likely to capture the murderer would have done as well as this mad rush into the grounds. If Williams had told me to search the garage, or the village church, or to take a train to London, I would have obeyed as readily. I had to do something. When I remembered that poor, kindly, stupid woman who had always been so gently foolish and free from any sort of malice, lying as I had seen her, I was eager enough for work which might avenge her. So that I did not wait to calculate the chances of any success for Norris, Strickland and me in the garden. I ran out blindly.

  I had snatched up a powerful electric torch which lay on the hall table, and after a general look round th
e house I went to the gravel path which ran beyond the wide flowerbed that was under Mary Thurston’s window. It seemed to me that here, if anywhere, I might find something, some … (the word had already come into my mind) clue. And I was not disappointed. I found two objects which, if they were not clues, were at least, I thought, connected with the crime.

  The first lay far out on the tennis court, fifteen yards or more from the house. It was a broken electric-light bulb. As soon as I saw its fragments gleaming on the short grass, I stopped to pick them up. But before my hand touched them, I paused. I suddenly remembered all I had read of crimes, and their discovery. Finger-prints! And I thought with a shudder that I had been projected by this affair into a new and frightening world, in which investigation, cross-examination, and the discovery of finger-prints took the place of the more normal events of my previous life.

  The other object was even more relevant. It was the knife with which the murder had been done. When I saw it lying on the wide flower-bed under the window, I was surprised. And yet, as it was afterwards shown to me, I ought to have been prepared for greater surprise if it had not lain there. For where else should it be? Wherever the murderer was at that moment concealed, it must have been his first care to rid himself of his weapon. And since the weapon was one which would easily be identified, he did not care how soon it was found, provided it was not found on him. He had done the obvious and the safest thing—he had dropped it out of the window as soon as he had committed his crime.

  So there it lay, and my torch even revealed a wet bloodstain on it. But once again I knew better than to touch it. I left it lying there, and decided to return to the house to report my discoveries.

  As I stood up I saw Strickland hurrying towards me. “Not a sign of anything,” he said. His voice was a little thick, but he seemed cool enough. His nature was perhaps too bovine to be easily stirred.

  I showed him the knife, and he whistled.