“You saw Cleeves?”
Tommy, a pipe between his lips, laid aside the pair of brass knuckle-dusters he was examining, frowned deeply and decided to take Christopher into his confidence.
“Only you mustn’t let it go farther. That poor blighter came because I sent for him. I bluffed out of him something he’s tried frantically to keep dark—and I can’t say I’m particularly proud of my achievement. Anyhow, this is it.”
It seemed that shortly before the fatal dinner Mowbray piloted Cleeves and two other Englishmen to the rooms above the Hoche resort. Having been there before, he had often speculated about the mysterious owner’s identity, and now, glancing through the set of Casanova he came upon a marginal note in handwriting which, though unfamiliar, struck him as unmistakably English. He showed it to Cleeves, and later questioned the concierge with the meagre results already known. Here the matter rested till, in Dorinda’s apartment, he made a startling discovery—Basil Jethro’s signature, in books presented to Lady Agatha. The writing appeared to be the same as the specimen which had recently roused his curiosity. He slipped one of the volumes in his pocket, meaning to compare the inscription with the supposed Schneider’s hand. When the murder occurred and placed him in a precarious position, he wormed out of Benedetto certain suggestive facts regarding latch-keys and telephone calls, began, like Tommy, to draw tentative conclusions, and to look about for a motive. Following vague information obtained from Cleeves, he put through a trunk-call to London, and was eagerly awaiting a report of Lady Agatha’s will when Tommy interrupted his tête-à-tête.
“I see now,” said Tommy, “precisely why Mowbray was so furious about my handing the drug over to the police. It was not merely the prospect of jail. It was the knowledge that a six months’ incarceration would prevent his tracking Jethro down while the trail was warm. Still, thanks to the law’s tactics of allowing him rope, he managed that same evening to revisit the Montmartre premises, and to find the famous journal, from which he tore out the final pages—undoubtedly those which dealt with the first and unsuccessful attempt on Dorinda’s life. If you look at the original manuscript, you’ll see that the latest entry breaks off just after the date September fifth—and that date immediately follows the author’s first stay, in disguise, at the Stanislas Hotel. In short, the pages Mowbray filched represented trump cards. He intended to use them, in fact, did use them—but said nothing to Cleeves, who was puzzled that his friend, after taking so much trouble, should suddenly announce his unwillingness to pursue the matter.
“It’s significant that on learning of Mowbray’s death by drowning, Cleeves should instantly have tumbled to the true facts. It shows, I think, that in spite of his worship he had a pretty strong line on the fellow’s character. He’s hysterical, and no doubt was overwhelmed by shock, but if he put his head in the gas-oven it was chiefly because he knew that once the correct interpretation was put on Mowbray’s end no one would believe his own part in the plot had been an innocent one.”
“But you think it was innocent?”
“I do, though it’s evident his idea of this is just what mine was before I allowed dust to be thrown in my eyes. He pictured the arranged meeting, on a bridge, late at night; Mowbray producing his damning proofs, and Jethro, prepared, rounding on him like a flash with these delightful playthings.”
Tommy picked up the knuckle-dusters and fondled them lovingly.
“Found on our philosopher,” he explained. “And I, for one, take off my hat to his skill in using them, as well as the calm dignity with which he squashed my theories at the very moment when the alien-slip which would have proved them right reposed in my note-case. I can’t get over the shame of it. The fact is, Strauss’s wiring me about the real Klauber hadn’t left me a leg to stand on. This partly authentic story coming on top of it—”
“How do you mean it was partly authentic?”
“Why, that old Renouff does translations of philosophical works, is afflicted with arthritis and lives in Montmartre. No, I never really twigged anything wrong till, in the gloom of that top-landing, something like a ton of bricks crashed down on my skull. The truth flared up in a rush of sky-rockets, one-eighth of a second too late.”
“And so you intend to keep Cleeve’s admission secret?” asked Christopher after a pause.
“Why broadcast what can do no one good and Cleeves a vast deal of harm? After all I took an unfair advantage of him by letting him think I knew more than I did. If he hadn’t been terrified by those statements of Hoche and the concierge he’d have seen I was four-flushing.”
Christopher, having mused over this new instance of the journalist’s sporting spirit, brought up a point which still mystified him. It was clear why Jethro had deemed it necessary to exterminate Jolivet, who, if questioned by the police, would certainly have let fall some damaging item; but how had he got the manager into his power?
“My fault, that,” answered Tommy sorrowfully. “It is fairly plain what happened. To make my fiction more acceptable, I’d told Jolivet I might require him to identify Klauber, promising him remuneration. In gassing to Jethro the poor chap must have mentioned this, little guessing he was providing the tip by means of which he would be enticed to his doom. Once I was disposed of, all Jethro had to do was to ring up Jolivet from a call-box, ask him to come immediately to an address where Klauber was being held, then go back to lie in wait for him. He may have imitated my voice; he may have pretended to be speaking for me. It didn’t greatly matter which, the prospect of easy money being a good enough bait.”
“I suppose any other method of killing wouldn’t have served.”
“No, because it would have been fatal to leave traces of either of us. His plan was to pack the dismembered bodies in the empty crate, ship the crate off to the south and collect it in person. At Cap Ferrat he had his own car, motor-boat and landing-stage. Given a dark night, he could have chugged out to sea and heaved the thing overboard. The butchering, however, was a lengthy job, which is why he had to leave it till the second night. There was my car to get rid of, disinfectant to buy, and no shops open till morning. That he parked us on the roof indicates a dim suspicion of the double game Hoche was playing. He wasn’t taking undue chances.”
“It strikes me he took great chances all along the line, though at that stage I dare say he was forced to do it.”
“Were they so great? Except at the single moment when the attacks were made, what snag did he expect to encounter? He hadn’t a notion you and I had been putting our heads together. There was, to be sure, a possibility of my disappearance being connected with Jolivet’s, but if nothing could be proved he was safe. The risk of entering the building with me was negligible, since minus the beard he was a stranger, like myself. Neither of us was likely to attract attention in a large place like that, where chance comers pass unchallenged except after midnight. Actually we didn’t meet the concierge, and I don’t suppose Jolivet did. Even on the second evening, although Jethro took the precaution of wearing his familiar disguise, he seems to have got in unobserved.”
“He had a strong predilection for Germans. Why was that, and why, having acted the part of Dr. Schneider for eight years, didn’t he use the same role for the alibi?”
“My argument is this: since certain physical attributes were unalterable, his best device for disguise was a change of nationality. As it was impossible to get by as a Frenchman, he chose a German, that imitation being easy to him. You see, having spent his childhood in the Berlin schools, he spoke French, as a rule, with a German accent. That accounts for the Schneider personality, and for the choice of a German in the second instance. As for his hitting on a living model to copy, I think I can supply the answer to that, too. He had to pass muster in the same hotel as his normal self, therefore, was obliged to adopt a handwriting utterly dissimilar to his own. Now, if you’ve ever tried, you’ll know how hard it is to invent a convincing handwriting. Your own characteristics will crop out; but any one with average ability can copy a hand which already exists. When old Klauber paid him a visit at the villa, he left behind a discarded hat which fitted. Probably that incident gave the plotter his cue. Why not let the hat form the nucleus of a new disguise? The professor’s handwriting and mannerisms could be studied and reproduced. By using an old overcoat already in his possession, padding himself out with cardigans and mufflers, and keeping to his Schneider beard and spectacles he could step into a ready-made personality suitable for all purposes. All he had to buy was a pair of continental boots—I suspect because no footwear of his own was sufficiently unelegant.”
“He could have adopted a non-existent name.”
“Which would have necessitated the invention of a signature, and the signature was all-important as well as hardest to originate. No, I should say he chose the way easiest to the amateur. The imposture would never be discovered, either, for Klauber would not be in Paris at the same time as himself and when there meant to put up in a different locality. In these days passports don’t figure, except at the frontiers, so that part presented no difficulty.”
“If he tried to murder Dorinda early in September, then he must have known she would be in town at that time.”
“He did know, from Helen, who travelled up with her, and who at his urgent request was going to stay with the girl. He planned that deliberately, in order to gain access to the apartment, for Dorinda alone would have viewed his overtures with distrust. Having failed to bring off his crime, he postponed further operations till later in the month, the second time elaborating his preparations by posting letters to Klauber from Marseilles as he passed through. What his scheme was then we shall never know. Certainly it went by the board when at Sophie Waldheim’s he stumbled on the gorgeous opportunity offered by the dope-party, which allowed him to distribute potential guilt amongst a dozen defenceless persons. He set to work at once. On Friday morning he deposited five hundred pounds to Dorinda’s account. In the afternoon he took his degree at the Sorbonne, and from there went to collect the disguise conveniently left at the apartment. He then concocted his tale about the latch-key—his one stupidity, to my thinking—and hurried off to the railway cloakroom to convert himself into the professor.”
“Why,” asked Christopher curiously, “did you still suspect him after assuring yourself his alibi was good?”
Tommy puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.
“It sounds silly,” he admitted, “but I believe it was a feeling I had about his handwriting. If you’ll give me that coat of mine from the wardrobe, I’ll show you what I mean.”
From the inside pocket of the blood-smeared garment he fished out a crumpled memorandum, smoothed it out, and pointed first to the irregular letters, then to the margin and the heavily-inked e’s and o’s.
“Here,” he said, “are four outstanding characteristics—scientific bent, intense egotism, extravagance, and—sensuality. Two I’d expected, the third did not astonish me, but the fourth? The man’s personality struck me as peculiarly frigid, in spite of his full, puckered lips, which in another subject might have suggested plenty of animal nature. Magnetism he had, but it was almost inhuman in quality. You couldn’t get near him. Aside from his well-known reputation for clean-living, I myself had noticed his instinctive shrinking from human contacts. I had seen him draw away with a sort of distaste when Helen, warmly impulsive, laid her hand on his arm, yet Helen was his friend. It didn’t go at all with those muddy, clogged loops.”
“Well?”
“I worked it out like this: if the man is sensual, then he not only keeps the fact well hidden, but the sensuality itself is of some odd, introverted variety. It must be so; but since experience teaches that no dominant instinct is entirely suppressed, I said to myself, whatever it is, it’s got an outlet somewhere. By a natural sequence of thought I turned back to what I had shoved aside as worthless testimony—the story my nephew told me about Jethro’s having been seen in dubious surroundings. Without much hope that it would lead to anything pertinent, I started a letter to Rank, then as you happened along I entrusted the inquiry to you and got back to the alibi end of things. Your coming in was the biggest piece of luck I’ve ever experienced. But for that I shouldn’t be talking about it now.”
“About the majun—had Jethro any first-hand knowledge of its effects or was he merely guessing?”
“He knew exactly what it would do. Mowbray’s practices were an old story to him, as you’ll see by the details regarding various drugs set down in this journal, though the man himself he’d never met. Before settling down to cocaine he’d tried most of the familiar narcotics, saving them exclusively for the occasional orgies when brain and nerves were driven to breaking-point, and never letting them interfere with his everyday life. They provided relaxation, removed the tight check-rein, and allowed his salacious imagination to run riot. You saw his books, the hole in the floor? Something of the sort I ran across in the case of a celebrated London surgeon. There are individuals like that, you know, who derive no pleasure from direct relations with men and women. Jethro was one of them.”
“Purely vicarious vice, I suppose.”
“Yes, with doses of cocaine regulated with methodical nicety to obtain the maximum of rapture with the minimum of bad results. After each bout he emerged revitalised for further intellectual feats, and became once more the machine of ice and steel. Nothing left to hint at past debauchery except that strange, dead-pallor of the skin.”
Christopher, still studying the scrap of handwriting, suddenly thought of the newest sensation. The police had discovered that a certain enormous consignment of cocaine and heroin seized by the port authorities a few months back had been backed financially by Dr. Heinrich Schneider, a fact elicited from Hoche’s Egyptian confrère. With so much to talk over he had temporarily forgotten it, but he mentioned it now, with the remark that Jethro’s business judgment must have touched upon madness.
“No,” said Tommy, “he was not mad—merely one-sided. A spendthrift, a reckless gambler perhaps, but this particular venture, if it had come off as many similar ones have done, would have quadrupled his stake and stabilised his position. It was the total loss of his last few thousands which threw him back on Dorinda’s fortune. No, I think I’ve put my finger on the basic factors in his make-up—inordinate craving for luxury, and fastidious shrinking from mankind. That mighty brain of his was an adjunct, superimposed. The combination’s simple enough, once you’ve grasped it. You doubt my statement? Then cast your eye over this letter from my Reuter friend, Strauss, who was a fellow-student of Jethro’s at the Berlin University. It furnishes some illuminating sidelights. Freud would revel in it.”
While Christopher perused the typed sheets handed to him Tommy kept up a running comment.
“Poor and resentful of his poverty—a spoiled arrogant youngster, taking all his parents or others could offer him as his kingly due; making no friends except those who could further his ambition, held for a bit by the vicious life of Berlin, but soon withdrawing, either from insufficient funds or reluctance to let anything hinder his advancement. The pure narcissus type, demanding all and giving nothing—centred in self, every impulse turned in, colossally concentrated on work, attracting, yet holding at arm’s length. That was the Jethro known to Strauss. Now let’s look along the years and see what happens.
“Grubbing, grinding, but no remarkable headway in his career. Why? Simply because he is no Spinoza, cheerful to toil in a garret. He has the tastes of a sybarite. Sordidness stunts and hampers him, the life of a poorly-paid schoolmaster gives him no chance for expansion—and whether or not you accept my theory, he didn’t for a long period, expand. All at once, when he is engaged in tutoring an earl’s son for Oxford, he meets a rich widow who becomes romantically infatuated with him and marries him out of hand. What then? Rapid unfoldment. Under the warming influence of wealth, the butterfly spreads its wings and takes its place in the sun.”
“Dorinda told me her mother made him,” said Christopher slowly. “Perhaps she was right.”
“Intuitively, yes, though her reasoning may have been wide of the mark. Certainly she sensed the unhappy situation which rose between those two who to the outward eye were congenially mated, saw how her mother’s love was thrown back from a stone wall of unresponsiveness, how bewilderment, hurt pride and anger led to unavailing reproaches. She could hardly have realized though, that Jethro’s peculiar temperament unfitted him for marital ties, that concrete woman and particularly a demonstrative one revolted his sensibilities. Superabundance of money he wanted, but he was unable to pay the price exacted. Read the record of his reactions, and see how he was nagged and exasperated till in sheer desperation he created the Montmartre retreat in which to hide and indulge his warped cravings. By allowing the discordant elements within him to crystallise into a Jekyll and Hyde duality, he obtained release while safeguarding his reputation. He couldn’t have done this successfully without his wife’s money. It was what he had needed all along.”
“Did she suspect?”
“He was never sure, but eventually the domestic scenes grew too distracting for him to cope with. Then it was that he hit upon the really Machiavellian ruse of making her a victim to morphia. You know, of course, that he himself supplied her with the stuff?”
“It’s true, then? I couldn’t believe it, after what Bramson told you.”
“Making Bramson his unwitting ally was a stroke of genius. He knew that confiding his secret suspicions would absolve him from any hint of complicity. He also knew that, like all morphia addicts, his wife would lie categorically to defend the source of her supply. Having snatched at the drug in the first place as a beneficent remedy against physical pain, she was now enslaved to its use, relying on it utterly, ready to fight like a tigress rather than give it up. In short, the diabolical scheme worked. The unfortunate woman, at once weak-willed and stubborn, retired bit by bit into an unreal world and left her husband in peace.
“What broke that state of things I can’t quite say. Probably all the time some deep-seated sense of injury lurked in the drug-disordered brain, and at intervals the victim woke up sufficiently to realize she was in the man’s power and to get a dim inkling of the motive behind it. What a situation! Loving and hating him at once and at the same instant; depending on him, storing up jealous resentment and finally evolving her plan of revenge. What did he want of her? Money—nothing but money. Well, he should not have it. She decided to reverse the will drawn up in the first moments of her enchantment, reduce him to poverty again. Perhaps, too, she contemplated a separation. Anyhow, she telephoned Macadam, and Jethro overheard what she said.”
“He didn’t see the letter she hid away in the book?”
“Apparently not, but the indiscreet taunts flung at him told him her intention. The prospect appalled him. Quick action was demanded. He contrived to treble the quantity of morphia she was preparing to inject, went quietly out, and returned to find her dead by her own hand. No suspicion ever attached to him. It wouldn’t now, but for this smug recountal of his triumph. Men of his type, forced to live with women they loathe, can be fiendishly cruel. He was. In murdering his wife and later on her daughter he not only felt no compunction, he considered he had performed as natural, inevitable an action as treading on a cockroach. In just as callous a way he would have crushed Dinah. If he did not kill her at the moment when she rose and left the apartment, it was because, recognising her semi-somnambulistic state, he saw what a perfect scapegoat she would make for his crime.”
“You think he did see her go out?”
“Personally I’m sure he did. The inspector tells me he saw Jethro’s face change for one paralysed second when at the reconstruction she exploded her bombshell about having passed him as she went out the door. That was before she’d explained what door she meant.”
“And the inspector kept that to himself?” burst out Christopher angrily. “He would. If you ask me, every blasted official from the bottom to the top, was hypnotised by the power of a name.”
Tommy shrugged. “I warned you, didn’t I, how useless it would be to bring a charge unless we could prove our case up to the hilt? That name of his would have gone on shielding him, even though an understanding of Dinah’s actions might have suggested what is now perfectly plain—in other words that however freakish her response to the drug may have been, she was merely fulfilling a series of logical desires.”
Plain now—but both men fell silent over the thought of how easy it had been to put a different construction on the affair. Christopher, stirring awkwardly in his chair, asked if Dinah was all right now. Tommy shot a covert glance at the battle-scarred face before replying.
“Oh, absolutely. She’s a plucky one and no mistake. Every day she brings me violets,” he quoted dreamily. “Sits here, puts up with my petulant humours and treats me as though I were made of wax and might crumble. And speaking of wax—what price that dastardly trick they played on her, substituting the figure of the corpse? My God, Loughton, my blood boils at the—hello, I knew the nurse couldn’t leave us alone for long. Well, what is it now?” he demanded querulously of the sister who tiptoed in, beaming archly.
“A young lady to see you,” burbled the disturber of peace.
“Shall I let her in or would you rather this gentleman went away first?”
Christopher sprang up guiltily.
“I’ll clear off,” he mumbled. “See you tomorrow.”
Noting the homeless-dog look in his eyes, Tommy stretched out a detaining hand.
“No,” he said. “Wait in the lounge till she’s gone, then come back and chew a chop with me. It’s beastly feeding in solitude. You will? Right.”
Christopher entered the lounge. As the door closed behind him a light step along the corridor made him clench his hands and set his teeth. He moved mechanically and stood staring down at the withered chrysanthemums in the garden below, his heart as dry and dead as the prospect he viewed.