Knock, Murderer, Knock! Read online

“Certainly, Inspector. He or she is sufficiently sane to be able to maintain an appearance of sanity so cleverly as to deceive the other guests in the Hydro, ‘one of whom, I am which,’ as I might say.”

  “That’s a damnably hard kind of insanity to prove,” said Palk. “Take a woman who is a secret drunkard, for instance. I’ve known one go to any lengths to prove that she never touches alcohol in any shape or form. She’ll feign illness, hide the evidence, and do anything to give the lie to anyone who accuses her of taking a drink.” He noticed that Mr. Winkley did not seem to be listening, and his voice trailed away. “Perhaps it’s an unfortunate example...” he concluded lamely.

  “On the contrary, my dear Palk, said he, talking like Sherlock Holmes! It’s an excellent example, for the woman is sane in her attitude to everything except drink, and my theory is that this murderer is sane except in his attitude to one particular thing, in which these three murdered people somehow became involved. Suppose that the murderer has an antipathy towards drink, and that he found Miss Blake, Miss Marston, and Bobby all at different times under the influence of strong drink, then we have a connecting link and...”

  “But Bobby Dawson,” protested Palk. “An innocent boy of seven.”

  “Perhaps it’s an unfortunate example,” repeated Mr. Winkley slyly, “but I am convinced that there is some such motive connecting the three murders.”

  Palk glanced round the hotel dining-room and, finding it empty except for themselves, packed and lighted his pipe, and the two men smoked in silence for a few minutes.

  “The trouble is that it’s such a hell of a background for someone who’s not quite normal,” remarked Palk at length.

  “They’re all a bit touched in one way or another, in my opinion, and no one of them shows up very clearly against the others. I sometimes wonder whether I’m sane myself when I’m talking to them. If we could consider each one separately amongst normal, healthy people, it would be so much easier to find their individual kinks. Would you like me to run through the information I’ve accumulated on the case since the beginning?’’

  “I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by it,” replied Mr. Winkley, lighting another cigarette from the stub of the first. “I’ve a pretty comprehensive view of things through talking them over so much with the people in the Hydro. You get to know people pretty well, you know, when you live with them, though I thought at first that they’d never begin to talk about the murders at all. I’ll take your papers and read them through, and we shall have to think of some plan of action. It’s no use waiting for the doctor’s little girl to be fit for questioning because she might tell us nothing of value then. In any case, she will probably not recover from the shock for several weeks, and there may be another murder by then unless we can stop it.”

  Palk sighed.

  “If we could only find the weapon-holder,” he said. “Mrs. Dawson said she guessed that it would be in some obvious place, but I can’t think of any we haven’t searched thoroughly. I’ve had every room in the Hydro turned upside down, and even the gutters and roofs inspected. No one could possibly be carrying it around with him, for we’ve examined even their fountain-pens.”

  “What puzzles me is where Sir Humphrey fits in,” remarked Mr. Winkley. “You say he’s definitely guilty of Miss Blake’s murder?”

  “Oh yes,” replied Palk decisively, “there’s no doubt in my mind about that. The evidence is strongly against him and he doesn’t deny that he was the last person to see Miss Blake upstairs. He started the trouble, of course. Stage a murder among a collection of people who are a little abnormal, and you’re almost sure to get an imitative crime. The peculiar thing about the first murder is that I haven’t been able to get any information about the Blake girl. She doesn’t appear to have any home or relations, for no one who knows her has come forward, and there’s no letter or scrap of paper with any address or personal writing whatever among her belongings. It doesn’t seem to fit in with her general appearance somehow; she ought to have a background somewhere. We’re trying America now. But that won’t help the baronet.”

  ‘‘His name’s Chervil, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Winkley, frowning.

  “Yes, Sir Humphrey Chervil. I’ve been rather backward in getting information about him; these other murders rather obscured the first one, and three murders within two weeks doesn’t give one a chance.”

  “Sir Humphrey Chervil,” said Mr. Winkley slowly. “It sounds familiar to me somehow. I’d like to see your baronet.”

  Palk heaved his bulk from his chair.

  “We’ll go along to the station now, if you like,” he said, with the air of a strong man humouring an obstinate child.

  Chapter 35

  The Newton St. Mary Police-Station was not far from “The Angel and Child” and Palk and Mr. Winkley strolled along in its direction in the sunny, chilly weather which November had brought to supplant the rain of the last days of the previous month.

  “Better visit him in his cell.” said Palk apologetically, as they entered the station. “He’s quiet enough, but after all, he is a murderer.”

  Mr. Winkley nodded briefly and they made their way along the thick stone passages to an end cell where the warder on duty rose from his uncomfortable wooden seat on their approach. He glanced through the grille, then unlocked the iron door and preceded them into the cell.

  The imprisoned man got up heavily from his narrow plank with a resigned air.

  “Well, Sir Humphrey, we’ve come to ask you a few more questions,” began Palk.

  “I’ve nothing to add to what I’ve already told you, Inspector,” said Sir Humphrey. “I’m not guilty of murder and I know you can’t prove that I am.” He barely glanced at Palk, and again the Inspector had the impression that the man was not unused to police questionings.

  Palk looked across at Mr. Winkley with an expression which said “I told you so,” which faded as he saw a slow smile spreading over the other’s face. Mr. Winkley obviously recognized the prisoner.

  “Well, well, well!” he exclaimed heartily, moving forward towards Sir Humphrey. “If it isn’t an old friend! The Lancashire police will be pleased to see you, my lad.”

  “You know him, then?” asked Palk, looking tremendously pleased.

  “Oh yes, I know him all right,” replied Mr. Winkley.

  Sir Humphrey sprang to his feet, looking the picture of injured anger and indignation.

  “What’s the idea, Inspector?” he shouted. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life and he knows it. If you’re trying to pin anything on to me with your American third-degree methods, I’ll have you made a public example to every police inspector in the force. I know something about the laws of this country...”

  “You do, Harry,” agreed Mr. Winkley. “If you didn’t, we’d have had you in gaol long before this. I’ve often thought that you must have been a law student before you took up your present line of work.”

  “Look here!” protested Sir Humphrey. “This man –”

  “It’s not a bit of use pretending, if Mr. Winkley recognizes you,” put in Palk. “You might just as well save your breath to answer all the questions I’m going to put to you.”

  “But I tell you that this man has never seen me before,” insisted Sir Humphrey. “Have you?” He turned to Mr. Winkley.

  “He’s quite right,” said Mr. Winkley. “I never have seen him before.”

  “You see,” said Sir Humphrey triumphantly. “It’s no use trying these traps on me.” But his gaze dropped before the quizzical expression in Mr. Winkley’s mild blue eyes.

  “No, I’ve never seen you before,” repeated Mr. Winkley, “but what I don’t know about you isn’t worth knowing. I’ve a neat folder in my room at the Yard with lots of pretty pictures of you, to say nothing of ‘ten little finger-prints, ten little toes,’ as the song puts it. You made a mistake on that Lancashire job, Harry. Your psychology wasn’t as good as usual, or perhaps the girl wasn’t used to it. Anyway, you put a bit
too much screw on one of those Lancashire lasses, a Mrs. George Entwistle from Blackborough Hydro she was, if I remember.”

  The prisoner sat down suddenly and buried his face in his hands.

  “He’s wanted, then, is he?” asked Palk.

  “Yes, he’s wanted right enough,” replied Mr. Winkley, “but not for murder. He’s known at the Yard as Harry the Punter, and obtaining money under false pretences is his particular crime. You must have seen paragraphs about him in Truth: this kind of thing, you know:

  The number of share-pushers is still on the increase, and even comparatively astute people can be, and often are, taken in by their plausible methods of attack. Small trial investments, for instance, will often yield handsome dividends at first, but when, tempted by the prospect of vastly increased incomes, the unfortunate victims are gulled into risking more and more of their capital, something seems to go wrong with the companies in which their savings are invested, and both incomes and capital vanish overnight. Some people probably still have painful recollections of the exploits of our old friend Henry Topham, or Harry the Punter, who operated in these islands some five years ago. This ingenious sharepusher, masquerading as Sir Humphrey Chervil, Baronet, worked the residential hotels of Ireland with marked success and seemed to have singularly little difficulty in persuading the residents, particularly retired members of the professional classes, to entrust their investments to his tender care.

  “Oh, they’re very down on Harry in Truth.”

  “Then he isn’t really Sir Humphrey Chervil?”

  Mr. Winkley laughed.

  “Not he,” he said. “I might have known who he was when I first heard the name. I told you it sounded familiar. He was Sir Hilary Chives when I last heard of him. He’ll be a whole blinking salad before he’s finished!”

  “That’s an offence to begin with,” said Palk. “Why does he always invent a title for himself? He must know he’s running the risk of being charged under ‘false pretences.’ I should have found it out for myself if I hadn’t been so busy on the other murder.”

  “Because most people in this world are snobs,” explained Mr. Winkley, “and he trades on snobbery. He knows that he’s safe enough. This is a stroke of bad luck for him which might never happen in a life-time. Of course, he wouldn’t exist amongst the aristocracy for a day, because the aristocracy themselves are snobs and wouldn’t hesitate to look him up in Debrett. But the middle-class people are good game. The very thought of rubbing shoulders with a title is good enough for most of them. I believe they would hardly care if the title were a genuine one or not, so long as they remained in ignorance. They’d rather take it at its face value.”

  “Yes,” nodded Palk. “I suppose that a title acts as a passport among such people.”

  “That’s it,” replied Mr. Winkley. “All Harry has to do is to put up at a hotel which caters for retired people with private incomes – Army and Navy and the clergy are all fair game – who are invariably dissatisfied with the steady interest they get on their capital. He gives them the impression that he is made of money, and sooner or later they approach him to ask his advice on investments.”

  “I remember Colonel Simcox saying that he could never get this fellow to take any interest in gilt-edged stock because he always boasted that he made his money earn money, but I thought nothing of it at the time,” said Palk. “I suppose he’d advise them to sell out some of their gilt-edged securities and put the money into some company whose name he’d give them in strict confidence.”

  Mr. Winkley nodded.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “and, of course, they’d get about ten percent interest plus a bonus at the end of the first quarter, and would be so pleased that they’d sell out more capital and invest it in his company, and wait for the second quarter’s cheque.”

  ‘‘And then wake up,” said Palk.

  “And then wake up,” repeated Mr. Winkley.

  Palk snorted.

  “‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’” he exclaimed. “How long has he been at this game?”

  “Oh, for years. I’ve known of him myself ever since I started at the Yard after the War.”

  “And you say he’s never been convicted yet? It sounds incredible.”

  Mr. Winkley pushed back the lock of hair which, at the Hydro, he wore brushed down over his forehead, and at once looked ten years younger.

  “We’ve never been able to get any evidence before,” he explained, “and it was pretty tough work getting it from the Entwistle woman, though she is frae Lancasheer and powerful fond o’ t’ brass. Have you ever tried to make a grown man or woman admit that he or she is a fool? Well, that’s what it amounts to if people who have been stung by sharepushers give us the evidence we’d require to convict them. They kid themselves that they’re such good business men and women, and make a bit of a splash on their first bonus so that their neighbours will envy them, and when they realize that they have been badly bitten, they’ll do anything except admit the truth, like that drunken woman of yours.”

  “Of mine!” exclaimed Palk. “I like that! It’s a good thing I’m not married.”

  Winkley laughed.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a case against Harry the Punter if he was only at the Hydro for three months. He’s a slow worker, and doesn’t get to the share-pushing stage till he’s been at a place he’s working, for longer than that. In any case, I can’t see Admiral Urwin or Mrs. Dawson admitting that they are damn’ fools.”

  “But I can’t let him go. He’s in for murder,” protested Palk.

  “He didn’t do it. He’s a share-pusher, not a murderer. He’s in the game for money.”

  “You’re forgetting the motive for the murder, aren’t you? The jewels. They would have been as good as money to him.”

  “No,” said Mr. Winkley decisively. “The leopard doesn’t change his spots, nor the Ethiopian, poor devil, his skin, though I bet he wished he could when the Italians started dropping bombs on him. Harry would twist money out of the few crowned heads left in Europe if he had the chance, but he hasn’t the guts to commit murder. Have him brought along to your room and get a stenographer. He’ll talk now, you’ll find.”

  Chapter 36

  Inspector Falk gave orders for Harry the Punter to be brought up to his room, and, not yet so sure as Mr. Winkley that his prisoner was incapable of murder, he had a double guard placed outside the door, and two police constables to stand on either side of him. When the pseudo-baronet was brought in, Palk motioned him towards the straight hard chair facing the large office desk, and began turning over the official records of his previous interviews with the man.

  “You’d better handle him, sir,” he said. “You know him better than I do.”

  Mr. Winkley addressed the badly shaken prisoner as if he were indeed an old friend.

  “Now then, Harry,” he said, “you’ve got yourself into a nice fix. If you tell the truth, I’ll do all I can to help you in the charge which the Blackborough police will bring against you. If you don’t, you’ll go up on trial for murder. Which is it going to be?”

  The prisoner looked up with something like relief in his dark eyes.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said earnestly enough, “but I don’t admit that the Blackborough police have anything against me, mind. I had nothing to do with Tony’s murder.”

  “Tony?” exclaimed Palk. “Is he confessing to another murder? He’d better be cautioned.”

  But Mr. Winkley remarked quietly:

  “You mean the girl, Miss Blake?”

  “Yes,” replied Harry the Punter. “Her real name was Antonia, but what other name she ever had, if any, I don’t know because I never asked.”

  Mr. Winkley nodded as if quite satisfied.

  “She was your partner, I suppose.”

  “His partner?’ shouted Palk.

  “Yes, Harry always works with a girl friend,” Mr. Winkley explained again, “or ‘operates with a young and charm
ing accomplice’ as Truth would put it. A pretty woman is invaluable in his kind of job. She can find out a great deal about the financial possibilities of men like Colonel Simcox, in a very short time. She arrived at Presteignton Hydro first to spy out the land, and she must have thought that it had possibilities, or Harry would never have followed her.”

  “By Jove!” exclaimed the Inspector. “She told Colonel Simcox that she spent her life going from one Hydro to another, and aroused his sympathy because he thought she was in ill health and had to have constant treatment. I thought it rather strange, because Nurse Hawkins told me she never gave treatment of any kind to Miss Blake, but I wasn’t sure whether the nurse was telling me the truth or not. Then you did know Miss Blake before you came to the Hydro?” he asked Harry.

  “Of course I did,” he replied. “I shouldn’t have come otherwise. He” – indicating Mr. Winkley – “has told you that I never work alone.”

  “But why didn’t you say so before?”

  Harry sniffed.

  “A lot of good that would have done, wouldn’t it?” he said. “You would only have stuck another motive on me – jealousy, or something. Fancy me being guilty of a crime passionel.” He laughed at the absurdity of the idea, and went on, “I knew that I’d nothing to do with Tony’s murder, and was always expecting you to find a clue to the murderer one day. I knew that I should be set free then, and I meant to go back to the Hydro for another few months to clean up.” He glanced at Mr. Winkley. “You promised to help me. You won’t hold this against me, will you?” he asked.

  Palk grunted in disgust, but Mr. Winkley replied:

  “I always keep my promises.” He consulted the papers which the Inspector had slipped in front of him and referred to them before continuing his questions. “To go back to the murder of Miss Blake,” he said. “At what time did you leave the drawing-room after the concert?”

  “About one o’clock,” replied Harry the Punter without any hesitation.

  “You said that Miss Blake went straight out of the drawing-room and that you went through the writing-room on your way upstairs. Is this true?”