And in a breath, bidden retell his tale.
Tertium Quid, R. Browning.
Meanwhile, in the row of buildings opposite, Riley was patiently conducting a house-to-house inquiry, trying to obtain any further information or corroboration of Dr. Ainslie’s story as to the unknown watcher.
He had just arrived at Hetherington’s flat, and was with great difficulty extracting information, piece by piece, from that gentleman.
Hetherington’s tall, well-set-up figure lounged against the mantelpiece, and with careless indifference he listened to Riley’s request for information. The sergeant could hardly believe this to be anything but a pose; it seemed to him incredible that anyone, living opposite to the scene of a murder, should take so little interest.
The artist, however, assured him that he “cared for none of these things.” He was completely vague as to anything which had happened during the past week, and Riley began to find it almost impossible to pin him down to any definite facts.
“You admit a man came to your door that night, sir?”
“Yes, but I keep on telling you he wasn’t anyone I knew. I didn’t recognize him then, and I’ve never seen him since.”
“Quite so, sir. Now, can you tell me what the time was when he rang your bell?”
“Oh! Between four and five o’clock.”
“Can’t you put it nearer than that, sir? A lot turns on the time, you know.”
“Well,” said Hetherington meditatively, “I’d had a man in to put up some shelves and so on. He knocked off soon after four, as he said he’d to go to another job. I tidied things up a bit, and had a smoke and so on, and then, just when I was starting a piece of work, this chap came and rang. I didn’t look at the time.”
“Can you fix it the other way about, sir? Did anything happen to make you notice the time after he’d gone?”
“Well, now you bring something back to me. I remember, directly after he’d gone, I went back to my easel, and as I picked up my bit of charcoal the clock at the church behind there struck five.”
“Come,” said Riley cheerfully, “that does help us. He must have been up here, then, at about five minutes to five?”
“Yes,” nodded Hetherington, “I’ll agree to that.”
“Then, sir, how long was it after that you were fetched across to Mrs. Dutton’s?”
“I wasn’t fetched,” said Hetherington perversely.
“Then how did you come to go across?”
“Well, I heard a woman screaming, and I looked out, and I saw a sort of commotion going on in the porch over there, and then someone being pulled and helped in from the front steps to the flat which I now know was Mrs. Dutton’s. Then I saw someone come rushing out and go flying across to the doctor’s and begin hammering and knocking like mad. So I thought I’d stroll out and see whatever was wrong.”
“H’m. When you heard what was wrong, didn’t you think about this man at your door?”
“No. Why should I? He looked a perfectly ordinary sort of fellow, and really it didn’t seem to me a matter of any importance at all. I forgot clean about him, and as I told you before, I don’t think I’ve given him a thought from the moment I saw him until you turned up this afternoon.”
“But, if you’ll excuse me, sir, didn’t it ever once occur to you that you had a man here, inquiring for a person who didn’t and never had lived in your flat, roughly at the very time when it was known the murder opposite was committed?”
“No, it did not,” replied the artist calmly. “I don’t pay attention to all the Tom-fools who come knocking at my door. As far as I know, a fellow called Finlay might have been here before me.”
“Can you describe your visitor?” But long experience had made the sergeant sceptical as to any helpful answer to this inquiry.
“Well, I don’t know that I can. I just saw him for a moment. Didn’t want to stay chatting with him.”
” You’re an artist, sir,” said Riley craftily. “I’d expect you to notice more than another. Didn’t you notice his build or his colouring at all? Just something, perhaps, you can call to mind?”
Slightly gratified by this small tribute, Hetherington was preparing to give more consideration to the matter than he had hitherto vouchsafed.
“Well—” he began, but for the present he got no further. The telephone bell rang, loudly and insistently. Hetherington took up the receiver, but turned at once to Riley.
“It’s for you, Sergeant. Inspector Woods wants you.”
Riley, greatly surprised, picked up the receiver and heard Woods’s tones, full of unmistakable agitation, though he was striving to keep his tones level.
“That you, Riley? I saw you go in to Mr. Hetherington’s and I thought I’d catch you. Come across at once to Mr. Ewing’s flat. I’m there. Urgent.” Riley could hear the receiver slammed down, and perceiving that no time must be lost, he barely stopped to say a word to Hetherington, and dashed at once down the steps and across the street.
There Anne Godfrey met him, her face positively ghastly. She pointed up to the staircase of flat b. “Up there, Sergeant, at once. There’s been another murder. Young Mrs. Fordham this time!”
Completely taken aback, Riley was up the stairs as hard as he could pelt. The door of the flat stood open. Rushing in, he heard Woods call him from the drawing-room. Entering it, he could at first see no one. Then the inspector raised himself into view from behind the door, where he had been kneeling.
“We’re too late, Riley, look here!”
Riley looked. Against the wall, sheltered from the door by the big lacquer screen, stood a large chesterfield sofa. It had originally been filled with cushions at either end. Some of them lay scattered on the floor; one had been thrown aside to the middle of the room, apparently by Woods himself.
Lying on the sofa, huddled up, her clothes disordered, her hands clenched, was the body of Penelope Fordham. Her bright, pale, golden hair scattered over a cushion made identification easier than would have been possible had the judgment to be formed solely from her congested face.
“How was it done, sir?”
“Suffocated! Held down, and the cushion pressed on her face,” returned Woods briefly.
“How long ago?” began Riley, but Woods interrupted him. “Not long. She’s still warm, of course. But actually I was up here myself not much more than half an hour ago.”
At this very moment the sound of steps was heard coming up the stairs outside, and rounding the corner whence the front door of the flat could be seen.
“Nell! Nell! Are you there?” called a man’s voice.
Woods rose hastily to his feet and moved towards the door.
“Her husband!” he exclaimed. “Riley, just stand between him and the body a moment.”
As he spoke he intercepted George Fordham in the very act of entering the room.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fordham,” he said authoritatively,” you can’t come in here for the moment.”
“Not come in?” said George, astonished and angry. “Why, what are you doing here? I thought you’d given up your occupation of this flat, Inspector. I understood it was permissible now for me to come and arrange about the furniture. I’m meeting my wife here at 4 o’clock. It’s just on that now.”
All this time he and Woods had faced each other in the lobby, George apparently determined to come in, Woods blocking his way.
“Sorry, sir. Something has occurred. I must ask you to wait.”
Just then fresh footsteps were heard hastening upwards, and two more uniformed men made their appearance. Woods beckoned to one.
“Show Mr. Fordham into the back bedroom here, Curtis, and you, Roberts,” turning to the other one, “stand at this door and see that no one comes in. No one, do you hear?”
He stepped back swiftly and shut the door in the faces of the little group outside.
Turning again to Riley, who was now kneeling down and peering into the disfigured and scarcely recognizable face,” See here, Riley,” and he pointed to the clenched hand hanging over the side of the sofa, adding hastily: “Don’t touch her, though.”
Riley looked carefully. The fingers of the right hand were clasped together. Something glittered from between them. Very cautiously Woods began to poke at the hand with a penholder he snatched up from the bureau. In a moment or two he had, without moving the position of the fingers, brought what lay within the palm into view. An irrepressible exclamation burst from Riley.
“Good God Almighty! The missing rings!”
For a moment Woods stood silent. He looked first at the limp body, then at the outflung hand with just the gleam and glitter of the stones showing within it. Then, with a sigh, he sat down in one of the chairs and buried his face in his hands.
“I was here an hour ago, Riley. I looked in to see everything had been left tidy and in good order. I only left half an hour since. I called in below to see if Mrs. Dutton was at home. I don’t suppose I was talking to her for more than ten minutes. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed up here another quarter of an hour.”
Riley stood appalled. He felt completely at sea.
“Why has it been done?” he said stupidly, for he knew Woods could not answer him. “No one could be in here to steal—and, as we know, there was no clue for anyone to want to remove,” he added more slowly.
Woods raised his head.
“You mean, you’re thinking that perhaps she was involved in the first murder?”
“Yes, she might have been mixed up in that, and come up here to-day, knowing we’d gone. Come to fetch something or put something right maybe—or else to meet her accomplice, that mysterious man—they quarrelled over these rings, all they’d got out of the murder, and he wanted to silence her.”
He stopped, and then went on rather heavily, as if reluctant to voice his thoughts with the body, still warm, lying before him:
“Things look very queer to me. There are these rings in her hand. We know the murderer took them from Mr. Ewing. We know she had the third one in her possession, and didn’t produce it until she thought you were on to her. This girl here was the last person to see the old man alive, though she tried to conceal that fact too. And she knew of the existence of the jewels.” He spoke more quickly as link by link seemed to forge itself before him. “We don’t really know that she ever left here at five o’clock that day at all. We’ve been assuming the robbery and murder was the work of the man, and we’ve never discovered for certain how he got in. Suppose the old man never let him in at all, but that this girl waited there and opened the door to him? He might have gone up to do the robbery while she undertook to keep old Ewing quiet?”
He hesitated a moment, trying to see how it all fitted. Woods did not interrupt but stared at him thoughtfully.
“That all fits in, sir, and it would account for the man being upstairs and being caught. He’d not have known, probably, what was going on in the drawing-room. He’d think she’d answer the bell, and never bother until he heard those other two, Godfrey and the Nurse, actually coming into the flat. That’s why he wasn’t blood-stained at all, I’ll be bound.”
“Do you think, then, she did the murder?” queried Woods curtly.
Riley glanced down at the body.
“Well, one wouldn’t have thought it possible. Yet, you know, women have killed others by violence—just think of that maidservant who did in her mistress and chopped her all up. Don’t you think it might be her very lack of strength which produced the great number of blows? She could have done it, seems to me.”
Woods shook his head wearily. “No, I can’t agree with you. I think that man wasn’t stained because he’d stood up and had the seat of the chair between him and the body. I think in that way he was protected from spurts and splashes, and he’d keep his hands clean. You’ve nothing here to incriminate this girl.”
“Except the rings,” interjected Riley. “Surely they’re conclusive?”
“Conclusive, yes, but not of her guilt.” He pointed down at the hand once more.” Stoop down and see for yourself. Look closely and you’ll see they’re lying in her palm quite loosely. Dead hands don’t relax, you know. If she’d held them tightly before death, they’d be tightly held still. But that isn’t so. Her hand really isn’t clasped on them at all. They’re lying perfectly loose.”
“You mean, the hand has been closed round them—?”
“After death,” finished Woods. “The rings were pushed inside her hand after she’d been smothered, but the hand, though it was pressed close round them, didn’t grip—couldn’t, of course. So there they lie as evidence, to me at any rate, of her innocence and of someone else’s efforts to incriminate her.”
“But,” expostulated Riley, not completely convinced, “even if that is so, it still doesn’t prove her free of the other murder. To my mind, if she were guilty of that it all fits together, and she might quite well have come here to meet that man. On my theory she and he were accomplices. She’d got those rings, all they did get out of Mr. Ewing’s death as it happened, and they met here to settle what they’d do. It would be a good place, as no one else was likely to come here, and she had a right. Indeed”—pointing to a ring with a little bundle of keys on it which lay on the table—“she’d got the keys, you see, to let herself in. Then supposing she and he quarrelled over them, and he went too far and then wanted to silence her, he’d leave the rings behind and so get rid of an incriminating bit of evidence.”
“No,” retorted Woods. “You don’t change my opinion. I don’t read the story of those rings like that. If she’d stolen them, and they’d quarrelled over them, she’d have been clutching them tight, you may be sure of that. That isn’t so at all. You’ve got to think of another explanation to fit the facts. My own idea is that she’s had nothing to do with the crime.”
For the moment Riley was silent. Then he moved away from the body and began to glance keenly about the room, seeking any signs of something untoward. He began methodically to inspect all the cabinets in particular, taking in the appearance of the tapes and seals, all of which were unbroken and quite in order. “None of these cabinets has been opened. The bureau’s empty, just as we left it. Nothing seems to have been touched.”
“Yes, but this cabinet isn’t as we left it,” said Woods, excitedly moving away from the sofa, for his eye had been caught by a very minute heap of white dust at the base of the one to the right of the fireplace.
“I’ll swear that dust wasn’t there when I was here a while back. It catches the eye against the black of the lacquer.”
Both men stooped, but there seemed at first nothing much to see. The tiny little heap of dust was apparently the scrapings of a small gash or jag made in the lacquer itself, running along the bottom edge of the cabinet at the side towards the ground, just where the wood touched the painted wall. There was nothing else, the small jagged tear on the surface of the cabinet, the powder lying on the ground.
Riley merely looked, considering whether the museum’s officials had made this scratch when they sealed up the collection. Woods, however, went down, and tried to push his finger in behind. He failed, however, the space was too small. Drawing a stout knife from his pocket he opened it, and tried to prise this in behind. This too failed, but the knife slipping, inflicted a fresh wound on the polished side of the cabinet. The black lacquer flaked away and fell in powder. With a grim little nod Woods returned the knife to his pocket, as though well satisfied. He then began to scrutinize closely the keyhole and sealed tapes securing the door of the cabinet.
“Just come and look, Riley. Do you think anyone has been tampering with this?”
Riley in his turn bent to look. “Well, I do think so.” He touched one of the seals very gingerly; it moved and the tape which it secured sagged. “Yes, you see, someone has put a heated blade behind it. They’ve meant to open this door.”
The two scrutinized the lock, but it showed no signs of having been turned.
“I think,” said Woods, “whoever it was got the wax seal loose, but got no further. We must send for the museum’s people, of course, to make sure nothing’s gone from the cabinet, but I think myself they’ll find nothing is missing.”
At this moment a louder sound of angry voices swelled up from the next room. Riley nodded his head in that direction. “That’s her husband, giving trouble. I expect he’s getting restless; he must guess there’s something badly wrong.”
“Yes, and of course he said he was to meet her here; probably he’s wondering at her non-appearance.”
“What’ll you say to him?”
Woods stared down at the limp, contorted body. “He’ll have to be allowed to come in. Well, I’ll get it over at once,” he said briefly, and turned towards the door.
Woods and Riley stood together once more in the empty drawing-room. The usual paraphernalia had been brought. Photographs had been taken, fingerprints looked for. Now all was done, and Penelope’s body had been taken away.
Riley glanced at his superior. Woods was very pale, but there was a faint atmosphere of confidence about him which communicated itself to Riley, slightly strung up as he was by the scene they had just passed through.
George Fordham had behaved like a madman. Thoroughly infuriated by the inspector’s earlier refusal to allow him to enter the drawing-room, he had stormed and sworn, and even when told of the death of his wife had scarcely appeared to take in the news, so furious was his temper. When at length Woods, calm and persistent, had succeeded in forcing him to give his attention to the police, he turned sullen, and was extremely unwilling to give them any information or help.
He merely reiterated that he had come to meet his wife at 4 o’clock, that she had the keys in her possession, that she had, as far as he knew, come on from her dentist, and that he had arrived a little behind his time, to find the police in possession. He knew nothing, of course, of the rings, and seemed to have been rendered quite stupid by the shock and excitement.
He had therefore been allowed to go home. A plainclothes man accompanied him in order to search Penelope’s papers, in case any clue might be discovered amongst them. Efforts had now to be made to trace Penelope’s movements that afternoon.
“You see, Riley,” said Woods, “this second murder is going to help us to solve the first. The same man has done both. I don’t think this was premeditated; I think Mrs. Fordham turned up here before she was expected. She surprised someone here. I’m pretty well certain I know who it was, and why he was here. I’m pretty well certain, too, that he’s really done for himself now. I believe he’s given me the very piece of evidence I’ve been after all this while. But I’ve a few details to be checked and fitted in before I go for an arrest. I want to take a risk too—try a piece of bluff which may help me a great deal. If the man I suspect is after all innocent, he’ll not fall into the trap. If he’s guilty—well, I’ll catch him with it.” A fierce, angry note crept into his voice as he said these words. Aware of the sound himself, he looked at Riley, and for once his clear blue eyes seemed to blaze. Riley was fascinated, for, well as he knew Woods, he had never before seen him stirred in just this way.
“Why,” said Woods, still speaking with that fierce undertone of violence, “I’d risk anything, pretty well do anything, to catch this fellow. He’s beyond the pale. A man who’s used his strength to kill first an old man, a cripple, then a woman—and tried to use his brains to fasten the guilt on her—” He broke off, and then added more calmly: “Well, I shall always blame myself I wasn’t up here to prevent this second crime. I might have foreseen what he’d be up to, but I didn’t foresee her presence at the time—nor could I have done so, I think. But there’s this one gleam of consolation. We were so close at hand, and the murderer must have seen your car across the road, he must have feared we might come up, and so he got rattled. He overlooked one all-important detail, or I hope he did, and that will just suffice to hang him.”