Let us consider Mr Hildegard Silvercat, who stood leaning precariously against the sharp corner of a shop window in the region of Berkeley Square on a winter’s night.
And, while we are about it, let us face the fact that Hildegard had dined both wisely and too well.
Wisely because his prolonged dinner with his partner, Mr Anthony Gallery, had resulted in a nasty hatchet being buried; too well because Hildegard—a very simple soul really—was not so used to champagne and brandy as the more alcoholic Anthony, and the night air was a little too strong for his already tremulous mind.
Hildegard gazed, wide-eyed, across the square with that peculiarly wise expression that denotes the second stage of intoxication.
Hildegard was happy. He realised that life could still be worthwhile, that Anthony, in spite of his bad tempers, his drinking, and his suspicions, was an extraordinarily nice feller, dammit, and that Venetia Gallery, his wife, was a definitely nice feller too—and a wise one.
Say what you like, Hildegard told himself, giving a manly push against the window and thereby obtaining sufficient momentum to begin to negotiate the square—say what you like, there were moments when a woman’s intuition was definitely the thing.
If it hadn’t been for Venetia’s intuition, if she hadn’t guessed somehow that Anthony had got the ridiculous idea into his head that there was something going on between herself and Hildegard, there might have been the devil to pay.
But she had. She had somehow guessed that the tortuous and odd mind of Anthony was filled with vague suspicions about his wife and his partner. She had observed his growing ill-tempers, his hatred for the inoffensive Hildegard.
What had put such a fatuous idea into Anthony’s head in the first place?
Hildegard attempted to shrug his shoulders. He failed dismally, merely succeeding in hiccoughing with such energy that he nearly ricked his neck.
By Jove, sir, it was clever of Venetia to have found it out, to have shown her husband what a fool he had been, to have convinced him of the idiocy of his baseless suspicions, and then, as a supreme gesture, persuaded him to ask Hildegard to dinner, to open his heart and to apologise for all the nastiness, the bitter remarks, the quarrels of the last six months.
Ten minutes ago Anthony had left him. Somebody had telephoned, and Anthony, staggering back from the call, had informed Hildegard that he was leaving, that he had to go home.
He was careful to instruct Hildegard that he was to follow, in ten minutes’ time. Anthony had ordered a final brandy for Hildegard before he had gone off. Anthony was a good feller, dammit.
Hildegard crossed the road and stood swaying gracefully in Davies Street, gazing at a poster that exhorted the world to ‘Eat More Fruit.’
Eating more fruit, ruminated Hildegard, was a national necessity. The poster was right.
He, Hildegard, believed in eating more fruit, dammit, and if he could get some fruit at that moment he’d just show you something—a nice juicy orange, for instance.
The very idea made him run a somewhat furry tongue over dry lips.
And at that very moment it happened. In answer to his prayer, a fruit barrow came out of a mews half way down Davies Street.
Hildegard, thanking a kindly fate for hearing his prayer, endeavoured to hasten after it. But it was of no avail. The barrow moved faster than he. No matter how he might try he could not catch up. His legs just wouldn’t work properly.
Fate intervened again. As the pusher of the barrow swung it across the road an orange fell off, rolled, unobserved by its rightful owner, into the gutter.
Using a first-class Red Indian technique, Hildegard stalked that orange. He approached it as a cat approaches a mouse. He sprang upon it eventually with joy.
It was a very good orange. Hildegard, having laid his overcoat in the gutter, examined it with pride, then, with great difficulty, he pushed it into the inner breast pocket of his evening tail coat. He would eat it with triumph just before he went to bed.
He looked about for a cab. He forgot that he was supposed to go along to the Gallery flat. Turning, he saw for the first time that evening Venetia, gracious, dark and mysterious as ever.
‘Well … well … well, Hildegard,’ she said softly. ‘You are in a state, aren’t you? But I can understand. I’m so glad that you two have talked all this nonsense out and that everything’s all right.
‘I was just going home when I saw your distinguished figure reeling in the distance. You’d better come in for a nightcap.’
Hildegard explained that that was what he was doing. That somebody had telephoned Anthony and that Anthony had instructed him to follow to the flat. Venetia smiled and took his arm.
‘Come along, Hildegard,’ she said. ‘We’ll go in by the side entrance. You wouldn’t want the porter to see you like this, would you, Hildegard?’
The Chief Inspector looked at Detective-Sergeant McCaffey, with a raised eyebrow.
‘Just where is Silvercat?’ he asked.
‘He’s round at the office,’ McCaffey said. ‘He professes to know nothing about it at all. He says that he met Mrs Gallery on the way home, while he was walking down Davies Street. He says he was fearfully tight.
‘His story is that somebody telephoned to Gallery while they were drinking liqueurs after an excellent dinner which had been going on since nine o’clock, and Gallery said that he had to go off home and asked Silvercat to follow on after him.
‘When they got to the flat he says he threw his coat on to the hall table, that Mrs Gallery insisted that he had another drink—that she gave him a strong one, and that he sat in a chair and went off to sleep.
‘He says he woke up at some time after midnight and went off quietly. He walked home.’
The Chief Inspector grunted.
‘He did it all right,’ he said. ‘There’s motive proved and everything. The woman’s story is supported by statements taken from half a dozen people.’
He paused.
‘But before we do anything serious,’ he said, ‘you might get around to his flat, McCaffey, and see if you can get hold of his evening clothes. Have a look at them and see if there are any bloodstains. We might as well get every bit of corroborative evidence we can.
‘Pick up Silvercat on the way back. Ask him to come down here and make a statement. We can get the warrant while he’s down here if necessary and arrest him here.
‘I suppose Brown is keeping an eye on the office in case he decides to try and run out on us?’
McCaffey nodded.
‘There’s just one other thing,’ he said. ‘It’s not important. Silvercat says that he met Mrs Gallery by accident.
‘He says that he crossed the road to pick up an orange that fell off a fruit barrow. He says he was thirsty and thought he’d like an orange!’
The Chief Inspector grunted again.
‘I bet he’ll feel like eatin’ one the day they hang him,’ he said grimly. ‘Go ahead, McCaffey,’ he concluded, ‘and on your way down ask them to send Mrs Gallery in again. I want to check her statement.’
‘l don’t think that there are any other points, Mrs Gallery,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘The main points are these. Interrupt me, please, if everything isn’t exactly right.
‘For the last six months Silvercat had been making unpleasant advances to you. You told your husband about this, and there had been trouble between the two men.
‘Your husband was keen on trying to put the matter right without having to dissolve the partnership.
‘Last night Silvercat invited your husband to dinner. You were rather frightened of this because you thought that Silvercat had something in his mind. You asked your husband not to go. Your husband arrived home at eleven thirty, rather intoxicated.
‘He told you that he had quarrelled with Silvercat, who had made one or two slighting remarks about you, that he had got up and walked out of the restaurant after telephoning you to say that he was coming home.
‘Ten minutes afterwards Silvercat telephoned from a callbox. He said that your husband had walked out on him, and that he was coming along and going to give him a first-class hiding.
‘Almost immediately after this call your husband arrived home.
‘He was in a state of intoxication and went straight to his room to bed. Your one idea then was to prevent Silvercat from coming into the flat.
‘So you went out and walked down the street to meet him and ask him to go away.
‘He was perfectly sober. You talked him into a better frame of mind, and he said that he would go off quietly if you allowed him in for a final drink with you. You agreed.
‘He went into the flat with you, threw his overcoat in the hall.
‘You went into the kitchen for some soda water. While you were there you heard the sound which you describe as a bump, and you imagined that your husband had fallen over in his room.
‘When you returned from the kitchen Silvercat was standing in the hallway outside your husband’s door, laughing fiendishly. Instinctively, by his expression, you felt that something awful had happened.
‘You dropped the glass and ran up to him. You seized him by the lapels of his coat and you saw, protruding from the inner breast pocket, the butt of an automatic pistol.
‘Silvercat pushed you away, and you fell. You struck your head in falling against the flat side of the hall table. You became unconscious. When you came to he was gone.
‘You remembered what had happened: you went into your husband’s room and found him dead, shot through the chest. You immediately telephoned the police.’
The Chief Inspector looked up.
‘Is that right, Mrs Gallery?’ he said.
She nodded. She could not speak.
The policeman shook his head.
‘It’s a bad business, Mrs Gallery,’ he said. ‘But if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, his murderer won’t get away with it. It’s an obvious case. There isn’t any possibility of doubt.’
She got up slowly as the telephone bell rang. The Chief Inspector answered it. He talked for some time. Then:
‘Mrs Gallery,’ he said. ‘Just a minute. I’ve just heard that one of my people has been examining Silvercat’s coat. There’s an orange stuck in the breast coat pocket. It’s stuck there so hard that it can’t be moved without a great deal of force.
‘The coat was lying on the floor where Silvercat evidently threw it last night. Tell me, Mrs Gallery,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Just how was the pistol butt protruding from the small inner breast pocket if an orange was jammed there?
‘You can’t carry a .32 automatic and a large orange in the inner breast pocket of an evening coat.
‘The point’s rather important,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘because Silvercat told us something about an orange. We didn’t believe him. We thought he was trying to make out he was drunk.
‘But the detective sergeant who found the orange has made some enquiries in Davies Street.
‘A street-hawker keeps his barrow in a mews there. This hawker says that he lost an orange somewhere in that district last night, that he was an orange short this morning.’
He folded his hands and looked at her seriously.
‘Sit down, Mrs Gallery,’ he said kindly. ‘Perhaps you’d like to have a cup of tea and think things over.
‘Perhaps you’d like to make another statement about what really happened last night, but,’ he went on quietly, ‘I must tell you that anything you say from now on may be used in evidence against you …’