Death-Watch (23 page)

“Be quiet!” roared Dr. Fell. “Now, steady, Hadley …”

All the suggestion of the girl’s presence gathered in this room to form her image. Inside the opening, which was hollowed out of the bricks about a foot deep, were some objects wrapped up in an old torn jumper and thrust behind a shoe-box as though for more jealous concealment. The shoe-box contained a gilded steel clock-hand about five inches long, and, also smeared with gilt, a left-hand black kid glove which nobody doubted was the mate to the glove in Hadley’s pocket. Hadley, with an eagerness that made his hands shake, carried the wrapped-up jumper to the bed before he unfolded it … A platinum bracelet set with turquoises. A pair of pearl pendant earrings. A flattish skull-faced object, somewhat smaller than a man’s fist. They rolled out on the white counterpane as Hadley pulled the jumper from under them, and the light made an ugly glitter on the silver-gilt surface of the skull as it tumbled grotesquely over like a severed head. “
Seize the bright objects …
”

“No!” said a husky voice. They heard the rattle of a wooden handle on the mantelpiece, and windy breathing. Mrs. Gorson came forward at a heavy waddle, one hand against her ample bosom, her eyes protruding. “That’s not right,” she said, with fierce intentness, and pointed to the bed. “I am telling you, God being my judge at this minute, that it’s not right. I am telling you they ’ate her.”

Hadley straightened up.

“That will be all, Mrs. Gorson,” he said, crisply. “Thank you very much.”

“But I ask you, sir; I ask you, now”—her breath still whistled, and she reached after his lapel—“now come and tell me if anybody should know better than
I
should? Eh?” It was though she were trying to hypnotize him with cow-like eyes and wagging head. “E-e-eh? When I’ve lived here eleven years, ever since the old Mrs. Carver died, and I know Millicent Steffins, who does not fool me, wants
him,
and he won’t see her … Listen, now! Only a bit, sir, and I could tell you—”

“All right, Preston. Take her out.”

“And I’m the one that’s done it,” said Mrs. Gorson, suddenly. Her eyes brimmed over. She did not resist when Preston impelled her out like a laundry-bag; but Melson steadied his nerves because he thought she was going to scream. She did scream, but not until she was in the hallway.

“Betts!” called Hadley. “Where the devil are you?— Ah! You’ve seen what’s in here? Good. Then hop down after the warrant. We’d better be prepared in advance. If there’s any trouble about it, have them phone me here for confirmation … Has she come in yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Then tell Preston to keep close to the door and bring her to me as soon as she comes in. But get after that Gorson woman—hurry!— and don’t let her say a word about what’s happened, not yet.”

“Wait a second, Betts,” said Dr. Fell. His roaring uncertainty had gone; he looked very quiet, leaning on one cane and waving a vague finger at the sergeant while he stared at Hadley. “You’re sure you want to do this, now? Why not simply detain her, and wait until the inquest … ?”

“I don’t care to risk my pension by passing the buck in the case of an obviously guilty woman.”

“But you do know you’ll ruin yourself if you make a mistake? You know you haven’t even given the woman a chance to explain this? You know you’re doing exactly what the real murderer wants you to do?”

Hadley lifted his shoulders. Then he took out his watch. “If it satisfies your conscience, I’ll do you the favour for all past help. It’s now twenty minutes past twelve. She should come in any minute …” He hesitated, staring. “Unless—Good God! Do you suppose she’s bolted? She didn’t go to work today; she went out with Hastings—” He slapped his fist into his palm and turned round uncertainly.

“If that’s it—”

“Well, if that’s it,” argued Dr. Fell, “nothing will be simpler than to find her. And then I shall withdraw my objection and you can execute your warrant on a guilty woman. But she’ll be here. What was the concession you were going to make?”

“Wait in the hall for a few minutes, Betts … I’ll talk to her, yes. You act as though I expected to get a great deal of pleasure out of arresting this girl. I don’t, let me tell you. I’m entirely willing to look at your side of the case—in spite of evidence that would hang a saint in the calendar—provided you give me a case to look at. But you haven’t done that. All you’ve done is ridicule the evidence that exists, and complain about my fat-headedness. Yet you can’t be working merely on a hunch. I’ve never known you to use as an excuse any worn-out rubbish like ‘intuition’; so, if you have any real grounds for believing she’s not guilty, let me hear ’em and I’ll try to take my mind off this evidence …”

“Oh, that?” said Dr. Fell, without interest. He glanced at the articles on the bed, and then over at the shoe-box in the aperture. “I knew we should find most of those things, even when I wasn’t sure in which room: so they didn’t impress me. On the contrary, they gave me my theory. I knew we should find the clock-hand and somebody’s glove, and probably the bracelet and watch. The only thing I was absolutely positive we should
not
find …”

“Well?”

“Was the watch taken from Gamridge’s display. Here’s my position. I have a theory I think is right. There were two overwhelming obstacles to it—not to the theory itself, I should say, but to making you or anybody else believe it. I’ve found a way over one of those obstacles. But the other is so big that I frankly admit it will take something like a miracle to remove it … On the other hand, there’s one very weak place in your theory—”

“It’s not theory; there are the facts, the literal hard facts, on the bed and in that box. You’ve admitted that even lacking them we could convict Eleanor Carver of the department-store murder …”

“And Ames’ murder, too, don’t forget,” said Dr. Fell, pointing at him. “It’s only Ames’ murder that clinches it and proves the whole.”

“Well, if a jury believes she stabbed the shop-walker, they’re not going to be very reluctant to think she also killed the police inspector. Even suppose they’re dubious. If we hang her by the neck for the murder of Evan Manders, it’s not going to be much consolation to her to say that the jury, after all, weren’t really sure she killed George Ames … And my case against her for the murder of Ames is just as strong.”

“I know. But I don’t want to hear the evidence. Just to make sure, before I start, tell me exactly what you think
happened
here last night.”

Hadley sat down on the edge of the bed and leisurely began to fill his pipe.

“As I reconstruct it—I don’t say this is exactly the outline; we can fill it in later with full corrections— Eleanor knew that a police officer was watching this house and trying to scrape acquaintance with its members in that pub …”

“A pub, incidentally, which Eleanor has never been known to visit; still less to know of a disguised police officer there.”

Hadley regarded him almost genially. “Going to fight every step of the march, are you? I don’t mind. Neither of those objections matters a tinker’s curse … Carver suspected the man was a police officer (he told us so himself), and Lucia Handreth
knew
he was (also by her own testimony). Now is it likely that either one of those would keep the news locked up secretly, and never comment on it to anybody else? It is not! It would come out, if only in casual talk. And if Carver had any reason to fear that his beloved ward had been mixed up in the Gamridge affair (as you say he told you), he’d have let slip a hint. In short, there are a dozen ways in any one of which she must have learned … More especially as,” said Hadley, struggling to light his pipe, “she was probably aware of somebody spying on her in the house, knowing her secret, preparing to inform the police it might be …”

“Ah!”
grunted Dr. Fell. “We come back to that mysterious accuser, do we? And who was the accuser?”

“Mrs. Millicent Steffins,” replied the chief inspector, placidly. “And I’ll tell you several damned good reasons. I’ll not insist on the obvious facts that (1) she is the sort of person who writes anonymous letters, spies on those in her household, and goes to the police in secret; that (2) she would know about that secret panel in the wall, which a guest here would not; and (3) she would take good care Carver didn’t see she was the first to accuse his ward and put the police on her track … There,” said Hadley, with his slow grin, “is
my
explanation for the accuser’s silence, without any cloudy nonsense. I’ll not say, then—”

“All right, all right,” interrupted Dr. Fell, testily. “You may omit all the things you won’t say. Wash out and expunge from your mind all the things you wouldn’t think of mentioning. What
do
you say about Steffins?”

Hadley tapped his pipe-stem against his teeth.

“I ask you to remember her conversation about Eleanor.”

“What about it?”

“You’ll admit, won’t you, that she’s about as talkative a parcel as you’ve ever met?”

“Yes.”

“And that she shouted to the world about Eleanor’s love affair on the roof; about Eleanor’s ingratitude, Eleanor’s selfishness, Eleanor’s greed; in fact, everything about Eleanor
except
—”

“Yes, well?”

“Except,” repeated Hadley, leaning forward after a pause, “the only things about Eleanor that were at all relevant to this investigation, and which she couldn’t help knowing were relevant. She must have known about the kleptomania—which would have been a much better weapon for a sly nasty remark than most of the ones she used— yet she never even hinted at it even before we brought up the subject of the Gamridge robbery. She was very silent on that score. She was
too
silent. Then, when we did bring up the Gamridge question and flatly accused one of those women to their faces, still she didn’t utter a word about Eleanor—even though she must have known perfectly well Eleanor had been at Gamridge’s; she would certainly have enquired why Eleanor had been late for her tea-party. All she said was, ‘Eleanor was late.’ Again she was too silent. And it couldn’t have been, as once you tried to hint, that she ‘didn’t connect one of the household with murder’; as I say, we flatly announced that one of them had stabbed the shop-walker. No, Fell. She went too far, too unbelievably far in the other direction in case she should be suspected of being the one who denounced Carver’s beloved Eleanor. She was as silent as the accuser because she
was
the accuser.”

After this burst of eloquence Hadley leaned against the footboard of the bed and puffed vigorously at his dying pipe. There was a gleam of amusement in his sombre eyes.

“So we’ve got the old bear growling, have we?” he asked, examining Dr. Fell’s choleric expression. “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got nothing to do until my victim returns, and I feel so strongly on the matter that I don’t mind going on to outline my case for the Crown. When I finish, you may rise for the defence if you like. Dr. Melson shall be the jury. Eh?”

Dr. Fell pointed his cane at him malevolently.

“Now I’m mad,” he said. “Now I’m good and mad. I didn’t suspect you were sneaking about fitting bits of evidence together behind my back, as well as calmly appropriating all the points I gave you. All right; presently I’ll tell you a few things even if the time’s not quite ripe for ’em. Yes, I’ll speak for the defence. I’ll tear your flimsy case to blue tatters, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll blow up your house of logic and dance on the ruins. Goo-roo! I’ll—!”

“Don’t excite yourself,” Hadley urged, mildly. He blew a film of ash off his pipe. “Something’s just occurred to me. … Betts!”

“Sir?” responded the sergeant, poking his head inside. He seemed astonished to observe Dr. Fell violently flourishing his cane.

“Betts, find Mr. Carver—”

“Stop a bit,” interposed the doctor. “There are to be no reporters in this courtroom. Slightly to change the metaphor, if you insist on baiting the old bear, it’s got to be done in private.”

“If you like, then. I can always verify certain things later. Anyhow, Betts, ask Mr. Carver about that clock he built for Sir Edwin Paull. Ask him whether the transaction has been concluded, and whether he received payment. Is Preston still watching out for Miss Carver?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hadley waved him away; he settled back, his elbow on the footboard, and stared at the Krazy Kat doll sprawling on the mantelpiece.

“We’ve established, then, that Eleanor is afraid she is being watched by a police officer …”

“And takes steps to murder him?” interrupted Dr. Fell, sharply. “No, I don’t think so. I think she was only at the stage of being afraid, and that the murder occurred in a manner of speaking by accident. Like this—”

“This is the last time I’ll interrupt you, Hadley,” said Dr. Fell with great earnestness; “and I don’t do it now to confute you, but to get something understood. I want to know how you stand on the theft of the clock-hands. That’s your thundering difficulty; and, curiously enough, it’s also mine on the opposite side. If you can produce even a remotely plausible explanation of why Eleanor should have pinched those clock-hands, I admit the defence will be pushed nearly to the edge. Now, now! Don’t say you have one of them found in her possession, so that proves she did steal it and therefore why argue? No! It’s the visual evidence I’m attacking.

“Now she stole those clock-hands either (a) out of pure kleptomania, or (b) to execute a deep-laid murder plot—and you must see that either explanation is howling nonsense. Granted that she had a spur-of-the-moment passion for pinching watches and bracelets. But it’s a very rummy sort of kleptomaniac who creeps out in the middle of the night, picks the lock of a door in her own house, painstakingly removes two large steel objects which have no value only as scrap-iron, and triumphantly carries them back to secrete with her hidden hoard. Whatever else you may call Eleanor Carver, I presume you don’t call her stark crazy. Otherwise you may have difficulty in getting her hanged.

“On the other hand, this deep-laid murder plot—applied to her—becomes nonsense by the every evidence with which you prove her guilty of the Gamridge stabbing. Suppose she is that cobra, after trumpery rings and bracelets, who, when her arm is touched, loses her head, and snatches up the first convenient weapon, and slits a man’s stomach, and dashes off blindly like a street-urchin, and only escapes capture by a wild piece of incalculable luck. Very well. If she is that woman,” said Dr. Fell, tapping a finger into his palm, “then I’ll tell you what she
didn’t
do.