Bleeding Hooks Page 16

  Chapter 26

  In spite of their resolution, neither Pussy nor Gunn did any-thing further towards elucidating the mystery surrounding Mrs. Mumsby’s death, on which they had so light-heartedly embarked. The sight of General Haddox creeping round the hotel after dark had made the whole affair too complicated for Pussy, and she tried to put it out of her mind. It seemed that the only way in which they could help Claude was to keep his confided fears from Mr. Winkley, and this was not difficult, as both she and Gunn had avoided him since their discovery of his connection with New Scotland Yard. As Gunn expressed it, “He’s a detective, and I’m no Emil.”

  In this, however, they wronged Mr. Winkley, whose position at the Yard was, in his own words, that of “a hunch expert”. The small room in which he sat for the greater part of the day was a kind of dustbin for all the ragtag and bob-tail of information collected at various times by the various departments, and it was his job to sort out and piece together the many half-facts which had no separate significance. As these facts had already been subjected to the scrutiny of all the experts of the detective force before being sent to him, only a brilliant guess could be expected to make sense out of them, and Mr. Winkley was, therefore, the only man in that building with the widely known telephone number who was encouraged to jump at conclusions.

  But Pussy and Gunn soon realized that Mr. Winkley was far from feeling aggrieved at their avoidance of him, and had no intention of seeking their company, except when he came to Pussy to borrow the salmon fly which Major Jeans had made. One morning they missed him from the hotel, and were told by Mrs. Evans that he had had an early breakfast, and had gone to London on business. She did not expect him to return until the following evening.

  “There!” exclaimed Pussy in dismay. “He did find another clue, and now he’s gone to get some information about Claude. That man’s not safe. We ought not to have allowed him out of our sight.”

  At the precise moment that she made this remark, a man in the police laboratory at Hendon was holding a film, still wet from the fixing, up to the light which penetrated through the north window.

  A satisfied smile twitched the corner of his thin lips.

  Good enough, he thought. There’s enough evidence on that little strip of celluloid to hang a man.

  The fact did not worry him any more than the extracting of a septic tooth worries a dentist. It was part of his job to gather the evidence to convict a man. He never visualized the mind of the criminal, or thought of him as a human being with a home and wife and children. He never considered the effect which the hanging of a criminal would have on the man’s family. That was not his affair. He thought of him only as XYZ1234, or whatever designation was affixed to the article sent to the laboratories for investigation, and it meant less to him than if it had been applied to an arterial road.

  His work was a constant miracle to him. Science, far from “taking the colour from the rainbow”, to his mind imbued those colours with a deeper significance. It was the difference between enjoying Der Ring des Nibelungen for its music alone, and enjoying it for the deeper significance of the Wagnerian philosophy which it depicted. He gazed at each microphotograph and each photomicrograph with the unquenchable enthusiasm of an astronomer who searches a familiar telescopic field for a new star.

  A noise disturbed him, a sound so familiar that he did not stop scrutinizing the dripping negative. The hinges of the laboratory door had needed oil for months. There were plenty of substances on the shelves which would have effected an immediate cure, but no one ever thought of applying them.

  “If you want those prints,” he said, without turning his head, “they won’t be ready till four o’clock.”

  “No hurry,” replied an unexpected voice, and he swung round, looking – silhouetted against the window – very much like the chemist in a well-known advertisement, except that his white drill coat was certainly not Persil-washed.

  “Winkley!” he exclaimed. “What on earth brings you back to town? Had some trouble with a record fish again, and want me to examine the scales under the microscope for you to see whether it’s a grilse or a sea-trout? Is that it?”

  “Nothing so simple,” replied Mr. Winkley, moving forward, and taking the film from his hand. “What is this supposed to be? The canals of Mars?”

  “That, my dear Winkley,” retorted the other, “is the most perfect ballistics photograph ever taken. See those scratches? Lovely, aren’t they? It was a beautiful gun, superbly made inside and out. I can’t understand why criminals never tumble to the fact these expensive weapons leave visiting-cards of the clearest engraving.”

  Mr. Winkley smiled.

  “I’m afraid my sympathies are often with the criminal,” he said. “Everything is so difficult for him in these scientific days. Wireless that gathers millions of people into a huge search-party, laboratories that analyse everything from his hair to his toe-nails – why, the poor fellow never gets a sporting chance.”

  “Oh, well, ‘Crime isn’t sporting’, as we all know. And, incidentally, that’s the title of a thriller I’ve just been reading. I don’t remember who it’s by, but it’s a damned good yarn. You’d enjoy it.”

  Mr. Winkley took a small, leather-covered diary from his pocket, and entered the name at the end.

  “I suppose most people would laugh at the idea of anyone from here or from the Yard reading detective fiction in their spare time,” the other went on, “but we all do it. They’d probably expect us to read biographies or even Plato.”

  “So I do, when I want to read,” replied Mr. Winkley, replacing his pencil in the diary, “but detective novels are not real reading, they’re recreation. The novelist pits his wits against the criminal, and the reader pits his against the novelist. There’s a great sense of satisfaction in solving the crime successfully before the last chapter, and an even greater sense of satisfaction in discovering that the writer has tripped up over some detail that you and I know as well as our own names. It will be a great day for all of us when Hercule Poirot makes a mistake. The man’s so confoundedly conceited. But, like the Lost Boy, Slightly, I haven’t really any hope.”

  He was interrupted by an apologetic cough.

  “Well, what can I do for you?” asked his companion, in the unctuous tones of a salesman suffering from lack of faith in his ability to please. “Sorry, old man, but we’re terribly busy at the moment. That” – indicating a bundle of coarse sacking in a corner – “has just come in. If we can extract a millimetre of oil from that lot, we can prove that the big fire at Millchester was an arson case. But it will take time, and a lot of space.”

  “I should have thought that was a Home Office job,” remarked Mr. Winkley.

  “They’re too busy with these Irish bombing outrages.”

  “I see. That’s pretty dirty work from all accounts.” returned Mr. Winkley, “but typically Irish. It’s to be hoped that the Government stand firm over it, but I’m afraid they don’t realize that you can’t make a friend of a Southern Irishman by giving him what he wants. It only makes him feel twice as discontented because he didn’t ask for more. Look here,” he went on, sensing the other’s impatience, “I won’t keep you a minute. It’s a case of suspected murder, and this is the only clue.”

  He took an envelope from his wallet, and shook out the salmon fly which had been cut out of Mrs. Mumsby’s dead hand.

  The white-coated laboratory worker took it up in a pair of forceps, and examined it closely.

  “It seems the right kind of clue for a fishing murder,” he answered. “Are you sure you’re not pulling my leg?”

  “It’s hardly worth while travelling all the way down from Wales just for that pleasure,” said Mr. Winkley, and explained the facts as briefly as he could.

  He then took out another envelope, and shook out the fly which he had borrowed from Pussy.

  “I hope you don’t want me to unwind them and then tie them again. I never can understand how anyone can make a neat job of these thing
s.”

  “Nothing like that,” replied Mr. Winkley. “I just want you to examine each fly as carefully as possible to see whether there is the slightest difference between them in any way, and whether there’s any possible clue in the materials used.”

  “And if they’re identical, the owner of the one murdered the person on whose coat the other was found, I suppose.”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t quite as simple as that,” said Mr. Winkley. “It’s a case of poisoning. I should like you to estimate how much prussic acid it would be necessary to have on that hook to kill anyone, if injected directly into the blood.”

  The other ran nicotine-stained fingers through his shock of yellow hair.

  “You do think out some pretty problems, Winkley, I must say,” he remarked. “I’ll tell you now that I can’t possibly estimate any such amount without first committing a murder myself. There’s no precedent for any such thing on our files. Of course I could try it on a guinea-pig, but that will only tell me how much it takes to kill a guinea-pig in that way. I can’t see the Commissioner giving me permission to try it on a human being, somehow, and even if he did, I couldn’t swear that every man and woman would react in the same way.”

  “But I thought prussic acid poisoning was instantaneous,” protested Mr. Winkley.

  “It may be, and then again it may not,” came the reply. “I’ve seen a dog killed instantly by a spot of prussic acid on its tongue. One yelp, and it was dead. I’ve also seen a cat walk about for half an hour in agony, after taking a dose which was four times what is considered the fatal amount for an animal of its size. You can’t tell until you try it out.”

  “But if it were injected –” persisted Mr. Winkley.

  “I should think it would undoubtedly be fatal, but this wasn’t injected in the usual way by hypodermic. All kinds of considerations enter into it: the part of the hook on which the poison was most heavily concentrated, the rate at which the hook sank into the flesh, whether it struck a vein, and all that. The only person who can tell you what amount was used is the murderer. I’ll see what I can find out about the flies. Where shall I send the report?”

  He took the address which Mr. Winkley wrote down for him, and turned with an air of finality to his bench with its beakers and dishes.

  Mr. Winkley took the next tube to town, and managed to catch the Assistant Commissioner for a few minutes. He was considerably taxed to compose a clear precis of his suspicions about Mrs. Mumsby’s death for so short a hearing, and his superior was not impressed.

  “It sounds to me like one of those yarns you fishing fellows tell,” he said, “or else a plot by a lady novelist.” He hummed a tune under his breath, “She never will be missed, I’ve got her on the list.”

  “If it had been anyone but you, Winkley, “I’d send him out with a flea in his ear, but, after all, we do pay you to get hunches, and we can’t grumble if you like to work overtime, I suppose. I’ll have those inquiries put through for you, but please remember that you’ll get no backing from us if you’re wrong. It doesn’t look to me as if there’s much in it, but I suppose I shall have to humour you. If you’ll leave your address, I’ll have the report sent to you. Good afternoon.”

  Mr. Winkley, finding himself dismissed, and somewhat bewildered by the speed of London after the slow quietness of the little Welsh village, sought refuge in his own room. He found the decorators in possession, and its familiar disorder covered with heavy grey painters’ sheets. He retreated to the busy streets, and, fretting because there was no train to take him back to the trout before morning, he wandered into a cinema which had seen better days as one of the old felt-and-plush variety halls.

  The walls of the foyer were hung with heavy framed photographs of he-men and glamour girls of the films, but the walls above the steps leading to the circle still boasted the no less artificial photographs of the stars of the ’nineties, as if no one had had the energy to remove, or even to dust them.

  On his way into the cinema, Mr. Winkley was too much occupied with his thoughts to raise his eyes above the brass handrail which divided the marble steps, but he came out in a more leisurely fashion after he had seen the programme through, and scanned the old photographs with interested eyes. He halted in front of one which purported to represent “The Great Hei-Wei”, evidently a Japanese conjuror.

  In view of the recent conjuring performance he had seen at The Fisherman’s Rest, the photograph held a special interest for him, and he could not help contrasting this kimono-clad figure with the troubadour-slim figure of Claude Weston.

  And so his mind travelled back to the mystery of Mrs. Mumsby’s death, and he continued to gaze at the photograph long after he saw it. Then he made his way thoughtfully back to his deserted flat.

  Chapter 27

  That same night, Pussy Partridge walked into her bedroom, chewing a candy which she had taken absent-mindedly from the open box on her bedside table, which Major Jeans had driven ten miles to fetch for her. She unbuttoned her tinselled evening blouse, which boasted as many colours as Joseph’s coat, and put it carefully over a padded hanger, substituting a somewhat disreputable pink cotton kimono. She tied a silk scarf round her head to protect her hair, drew a chair up to the old-fashioned dressing-table of pale Italian walnut, and began to prepare her face for the night.

  For a time she was completely absorbed in the task of slapping wet cotton wool, skin tonic, and cleansing cream on to her face, but when she took up her magnifying minor to inspect the lines and crevices of her skin more clearly, her thoughts began to wander.

  It was all very difficult, she thought. Whenever circumstances or her mother were not too much against her, she did exactly what she liked. Riding roughshod over people’s feelings didn’t worry her in the least, for, in what little philosophy she possessed, it was everyone for himself and the devil take the hindmost. But when she did suddenly take it into her head to be tactful and to try and please everyone, things always went wrong.

  Take tonight, for instance.

  Usually, of course, she and Piggy spent the evening with Mr. Winkley discussing Mrs. Mumsby’s death, which she really could not regard any longer as murder. She never had believed it possible to murder anyone with a fly-hook; that had just been make-believe to enliven the holiday in this dead-alive hole. It had been rather fun to pretend, especially as Mr. Winkley had taken it all so seriously, but now she had other things to worry about, and it wasn’t fun any longer.

  The trouble had all arisen from her kindness of heart, but, of course, no one would believe that.

  Major Jeans had suggested a game of bridge, and as her mother had seemed keen as well, she had made Piggy play, much against his will. She played vilely, of course, but in these days it simply wasn’t done to say that you couldn’t play bridge, and, after all, she had put in a bit of practice at those dull tea-parties of her mother’s, where everyone stared at her as though she were a loose woman, and talked down to her as if she were still ten years old.

  She and Piggy had cut as partners, so she sat next to Major Jeans. He had ogled her, and made slightly questionable jokes, at which she had laughed too loudly out of sheer politeness, though she had heard them all years ago and they weren’t a patch on the ones out of Piggy’s extensive repertoire. Then the Major had talked a lot about a B.W.O., which, it appeared, was a fly called a Blue-Winged Olive, and not what your best friends couldn’t tell you. And after that, he had mentioned the salmon fly which had been stuck in Mrs. Mumsby’s hand.

  “If it had been a nymph, now, it would have been more appropriate,” he had remarked, and although she understood that implication well enough, she had thought it rather bad taste to say it in front of her mother.

  She had grown bored by his long monologue on fly-nymphs so that, when he had turned his twinkling blue eyes on her, and had asked fatuously, “I bet you can’t tell me what a nymph’s overcoat is called,” she had replied, “Aw, shucks!” in the hope of shutting him up.

  But that, ap
parently, had been the right answer. It had really been rather clever of her, and the Major had felt more encouraged than ever. Mother had seemed pleased, too, but Piggy was in a vile humour, and evidently thought that she was playing up to the Major just to make him jealous, instead of its being all through kindness and one pink gin too many. So, of course, she had had to encourage the Major just for spite, and he had ended by rubbing his leg against hers, and purring like an old tom cat. If Piggy hadn’t happened to drop a card, and peer under the table for it, she would have explained everything afterwards, but it had been so rotten of him to jump to the worst conclusions, that she had simply had to snub him a bit more. By the end of the last rubber they owed her mother and the Major over ten shillings between them, and after the Major had offered to take his share in kisses, Piggy was in a temper only to be described as flaming, while his face was as white as a sheet.

  Piggy had turned on her when the others had gone, and had seized her arms in a grip that had brought tears to her eyes. His brown-flecked eyes shone with a devil she had never seen in them before, and she had felt rather scared.

  “You little rotter!” he had said venomously. “I’ll teach you that you can’t play around with me! You think that you’re clever, making up to that old sugar-daddy in front of me, don’t you? You think that because I’m crazy about you, I shall crawl on my knees and lick your shoes. Well, you’ve got me wrong, Baby. Another woman thought the same thing once: she knows better now. You can’t play me for a sucker, and get away with it. Anyway, it’s about time that we had some understanding. You’ll have to decide whether you’re going to marry me or not, before the end of this holiday. If the idea doesn’t appeal to you, I’ll go away, and never see you again. If you play fast and loose with me, I’ll strangle you!”

  He had turned to the bell and ordered whisky, and somehow all her pride had melted, and she had tilted her sensuous red mouth towards him.