The Silk Stocking Murders (7 page)

Roger understood that not until official permission had actually come through would the Chief Inspector discuss the case with him further than to pick his brains. He smiled, well enough content with the result of his lunch-party.

S
OON
after eight o’clock that same evening, in response to a telephoned hint from Roger, Chief Inspector Moresby again visited the Albany, official permission to discard his reticence at last duly obtained. Roger welcomed him with a choice of whisky or beer, pipe tobacco or cigarettes, and they settled down in front of the fire, pipes alight and a pewter tankard at each elbow, to go into the case with real thoroughness.

“By the way, have you seen
The Evening Clarion?
” Moresby remarked first of all, pulling the paper in question from his pocket. “You journalists do give us a lot of trouble, you know.” He handed it over, marking a certain paragraph with his thumb.

The paragraph was at the end of an account of the inquest on Lady Ursula that morning. Roger read: “From the unobtrusive presence among the spectators at the back of the court of a certain highly placed official at Scotland Yard, it may be argued that the police are not altogether satisfied with the case as it stands at present. Certainly there seem to be many obscure points which require clearing up. It must not be supposed that the said official’s interest in the proceedings necessarily means that Scotland Yard definitely suspects foul play, but it is not too much to assume that we have not yet heard the last of this tragic affair.”

“Very cleverly put,” was Roger’s professional comment. “Damn, the fellow!” he added, unprofessionally.

“It’s a nuisance,” agreed his companion. “I’ve put a stop to any more, of course, and I dare say there’s no harm done really; but that sort of thing’s very annoying when you’re doing all you can to keep your inquiries a close secret. Anyhow, there’s one blessing: nobody’s brought up the Monte Carlo business yet.”

“Monte Carlo? What’s that?”

“Oh, didn’t you know about that, Mr. Sheringham?” asked the Chief Inspector, his eyes twinkling. “I made sure you had that at your fingers’ ends. Why, a French girl—a
croquette,
or whatever they call ’em over there——”

“A
cocotte,”
Roger corrected without a smile. “Described as an actress. Yes?”

“Well, a French
cocotte
was found dead in her bedroom in February in just the same way. She’d lost a good deal of money in the Casino, so of course they assumed she’d hanged herself. It was more or less hushed up (those things always are there) and I don’t think it was even mentioned in the papers over here. We heard about it, unofficially.”

“Monte Carlo this February, eh?” Roger said thoughtfully. “That ought to be a bit of a help.”

“It’s about all we’ve got to go on,” said the Chief Inspector, rather dolefully. “I mean, assuming that this is murder at all and that the same man’s responsible for it. That, I should say, and the note.”

“The note? Oh, you mean the note Lady Ursula left. Yes, I’d realised of course that if it was murder, all those notes must have been written with quite a different meaning than the one everybody gave them later. The murderer’s a clever man, Moresby, there’s no getting away from it.”

“He is that, Mr. Sheringham. But there’s a bit more to be got out of Lady Ursula’s than the others. If it
was
murder, then that note must have meant something quite different, as you say. But its importance to us is that it was creased. You can see it at the Yard any time.”

“I see,” Roger nodded. “And it hadn’t been left in an envelope, you mean. In other words, it must have been in another envelope at one time, and therefore was definitely not written on that occasion.”

“Or in somebody’s pocket. The paper’s a tiny bit rubbed at the creases as if it had been in a pocket. Well, Mr. Sheringham, find the person to whom that note was written, and we’ve gone a long way towards solving the mystery. It’s the only clue we’ve got, but I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t going to be the only one we shall want. Mark my words, sir, it’s that note that’s going to clear up this affair for us, if we can only find out who it was written to.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Roger replied noncommittally. Privately, however, he did not feel so sure. He recognised that Scotland Yard was going to regard the letter as the Dominant Clue; but the method of the Dominant Clue, though often brilliantly successful (or rather, not so much brilliantly as painstakingly), was liable to fall to the ground when the clue in question did not come up to scratch. By disregarding the side-issues in these latter cases Scotland Yard had many failures in its records which a less single-aimed method, such as the French with its inductive reasoning, would almost certainly have solved; and it was no palliative to point out that the reverse also was equally true, and that there are unsolved mysteries in the French annals which the more laborious method of Scotland Yard would probably have cleared up.

A really rogue-proof detective-service, Roger had long ago decided, should not stick to one method at all, but make use of them all; and he determined that the partnership between himself and Moresby should be such a service in miniature. Let Moresby pursue the Dominant Clue and call on the organised resources of Scotland Yard to help him do so; he himself would look at the problem as a whole, from every possible side, and do his best to combine the amazing deductive powers of the Austrian criminological professors with the imaginative brilliance of the star French detectives. It is characteristic of Roger that he took this tremendous task on his shoulders with complete composure, between two pulls at his tankard.

The two settled down into a steady talk.

During the next half-hour Roger found himself much impressed with the common sense level-headedness of his colleague, whom he had been inclined to regard, in consequence of his preference for, a Dominant Clue, as lacking in perception of the finesses of scientific criminology. He was also a little chagrined to find that Moresby’s knowledge of criminal history was even more complete than his own.

As the discussion progressed Roger was not the only one to make discoveries. The Chief Inspector, too, hitherto disposed to regard Roger as a volatile-witted amateur intent only upon proving impossible theories of his own erection, now found himself considerably more impressed than he had anticipated by his companion’s quick grasp of essentials and the vivid imagination he was able to bring to bear on the problem. If he had felt any misgivings about taking a leaf out of the story-books and admitting an amateur into his councils, they were not long in disappearing. By the end of half an hour the partnership was on a firm basis.

As if to mark the fact, Roger rose and replenished the tankards. The beer, it may be remarked, was a good sound XXXX, of a dark fruity colour, from a cask in the next room, Roger’s study. Oh, all you young women, distrust a man who does not drink good sound fruity XXXX with zest as you would one of your own sex who did not care to powder her nose.

“Now it seems to me,” said Roger as he sat down again, “that we’ve been talking too much at random. Let’s take things under their proper heads, one at a time. First of all the deaths themselves. We’ve agreed that any other hypothesis but that of murder is putting too great a strain on coincidence, haven’t we? Well, then, let’s take a leaf out of the French notebook and reconstruct the crime.”

“Very well, Mr. Sheringham, sir. I’d like to hear you do that.”

“Well, this is how I see it. The murderer first of all selected his victim with a good deal of care. She must fulfil certain conditions. For instance, she must above all be so far familiar with his appearance, at any rate, as to feel no alarm on seeing him. Then the opportunity would be chosen with equal cunning. It must be when she is alone and likely to remain so for at least half an hour. But all that’s quite elementary.”

“There’s never any harm in running over the elementary parts with the rest,” said the Chief Inspector, gazing into the fire.

“Well, having got the girl and the opportunity together, he proceeds to overpower her. I say that, because no girl is going to submit tamely to being hanged, still less is she going to take off one of her stockings and offer it for the purpose; and yet none of them show any obvious evidence of a struggle. Even the marks on Lady Ursula’s wrists can’t be called that. Well, now, how did he overpower them?”

“That’s it,” observed Chief Inspector Moresby.

“He was devilish clever,” Roger continued, warming to his work. “You try overpowering an ordinary, healthy girl and see whether there isn’t going to be a deuce of a struggle. Of course there is. So it’s an elementary deduction to say that he must be a strong, and probably very big man. And they didn’t even cry out. Obviously, then, he must have stopped that first. I’m not so childish, by the way, as to suggest chloroform or anything fatuous like that; anybody but the writers of penny dreadfuls knows that chloroform doesn’t act like that, to say nothing of the smell afterwards. No, what I do suggest is a woollen scarf thrown unexpectedly across her mouth from behind and drawn tight in the same instant. How’s that?”

“I can’t think of anything better, and that’s a fact.”

“Well, a strong man could easily knot that at the back of her head, catch her wrists (her hands would be instinctively trying to pull at the stuff over her mouth) and twist them into the small of her back. I admit that it’s more of a job to fasten them there, but a knowledge of ju-jitsu might help; he could put her, I mean, in such a position that she couldn’t move without breaking an arm, hold both her wrists there with one hand and tie them together with the other. And as there are only the faintest bruises there, he would obviously have to fasten them with something that isn’t going to cut the skin—one end of the same woollen scarf, for instance.” Roger paused and moistened his clay.

“Go on, Mr. Sheringham,” urged Moresby politely.

“Well, then, of course, he’d got her where he wanted, her. It wouldn’t be difficult after that, I imagine, to remove one of her stockings; and then he could proceed with his preparations at leisure, screwing the hook in the door, arranging a chair to stand her on, and all the rest of it. And after he’d hanged her all he would have to do is to unfasten the scarf and untie her wrists and ankles.”

The Chief Inspector nodded. “That’s about what happened, no doubt of it.”

“Well, there’s the reconstruction, and I don’t see that it gives us anything fresh, except perhaps the woollen scarf, and that’s only a guess. As to the man’s psychology, that’s obvious enough. He’s mad, of course. His only possible motive, so far as one can see, is murder for love of killing. Homicidal mania, developed to hopeless insanity. The victim’s own stocking, for instance. And I imagine it would have to be silk. Yes, that brain of his must be full of strange twists; the idea of hanging a girl with a lisle-thread stocking would probably shock him as much as it would you or me.”

“It’s on Jack the Ripper lines, right enough,” commented the Chief Inspector.

“That’s another heading: Criminological Parallels. There’s Jack the Ripper, as you say, and Neill Cream, though he’s rather different psychologically. I never could understand him not wanting to watch his victims die, could you? I should have imagined that was the whole object of that type of murderer. Can you think of any other similar cases besides those two?”

“Sexual murders, Mr. Sheringham, or lust-murders, as the psychologists call them? Well, they’re not very common in this country, are they? Most of the foreign ones are like Jack the Ripper, too, aren’t they? Stabbing, I mean. I suppose, taking ’em all round, the best-known are Andreas Bickel, Menesclou, Alton, Gruyo and Verzeni. Then there was an outbreak of stabbing murders in New York in July 1902, and another in Berlin, funnily enough, the same month. Then there was Wilhelm Damian, In Ludwigshafen in Germany, in 1901, and——”

“Great Scott, Moresby!” interrupted the astonished Roger. “You must have been sitting up late since they made you a Chief Inspector. How on earth do you know all this?”

“It’s my business, Mr. Sheringham,” replied the Chief Inspector austerely, and drowned his smile in good XXXX.

“Well, what I meant,” Roger continued, in somewhat chastened tones, “is, can we learn anything from these parallels?”

“I doubt it, sir, except that of all murderers these are the most difficult to catch; and it won’t need any criminological parallels to teach us that, I’m afraid.”

“Well, let’s go on to the next heading: Victims. What do they give us? The Monte Carlo woman—do you know anything about her?”

“Not yet. I’ve written over for all details. But if it was the same man, we get that he must have been in Monte Carlo at the time, of course.”

“Yes, that may help us a lot. What about getting hold of a list of all English visitors at Monte Carlo last February?”

“I’ve done that, Mr. Sheringham,” replied the Chief Inspector with a tolerant smile; in matters of routine no amateur could teach him anything. “And in Nice, Cannes and all the other Riviera places as well.”

“Good man,” said Roger, uncrushed. “Well, then there’s Janet Manners—or Unity Ransome, as I think we’d better go on calling her. The only thing I can see there is that he must have been known to her; and pretty well too for her to have taken him into her sitting-room when she was alone in the flat; that is, if I read her rightly. That may be a useful help to us.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Elsie Benham, so far as I see, gives us nothing at all. He might have been known to her or he might not. In the second alternative she must have picked him up between the club and her flat off the Tottenham Court Road; in the first, he might have been waiting for her at the flat. The only hope is that the constable on the beat caught sight of them together.”

“And he didn’t,” put in the Inspector. “I’ve already ascertained that. But I’m having inquiries made as to anyone else having done so, though I don’t think there’s much hope.”

“And that leaves Lady Ursula. Well, you know, I can’t see that there’s much more there. When one comes to think of it, he needn’t have known her at all. He could have introduced himself easily enough in the street as a friend of a friend of hers; a little thing like that wouldn’t have worried Lady Ursula. Or he might have been a friend of the girl who owns the studio, and knocked in passing on seeing a light inside. I can’t see that there’s much more.”