Bleeding Hooks Read online

  “Well,” replied Gunn, “three heads might be better than one, even if one of them is Pussy’s poor substitute. Perhaps we can help.”

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t want to, if you knew as much about it as I do.”

  “Oh, rot!” exclaimed Pussy. “We’ve helped with all the dirty work. I want to be in at the death.”

  “Very well,” was the reply. “Let’s see what you make of this.” He spread the letter and began to read:

  “George Mumsby, theatrical promoter. Owned a chain of provincial variety theatres which he sold to Oleander Cinema Syndicate for a fabulous sum, and retired on proceeds. Died of diabetes in 1933. All money and property left to the dead woman known as Ruby Mumsby. Baptismal name, Gladys May, daughter of a coster named Charles Clew –”

  He paused, and looked up.

  “It’s spelt C-l-e-w,” he remarked.

  “Gladys Clew,” murmured Gunn. “Perhaps there’s a clue in the name.”

  “There is,” returned Mr. Winkley, “if you can find it. It’s quite simple.”

  “Clew,” repeated Pussy. “I can’t see –”

  She stopped abruptly, as Claude made one of his lightning descents of the stairs, and almost landed on top of them.

  “I’m in awful trouble,” he said, and his eyes were moist. “You must tell me what to do. It’s Dad. I always knew he had a weak heart. He had to give up salmon fishing because it was too strenuous, but I never knew it had got to this stage. Look!”

  He thrust a folded piece of parchment towards them and Mr. Winkley caught sight of the familiar words “Last Will and Testament”, before Claude snatched it away.

  “It’s his will,” he explained. “It says, ‘To my only son, Claude Lionel Everard...’ He must just have made it; it isn’t signed yet. He’s left me everything. He’s always done everything for me all my life, and now he’s going to die. I can’t bear it, I tell you. It isn’t fair!”

  “What isn’t fair, Claude?” asked Mr. Weston’s quiet voice from behind them.

  Claude swung round on his heel and reddened to the roots of his faun-like hair.

  “It’s – I found this,” he said, holding out the will. “You didn’t tell me anything about it. You left it for me to find out. It isn’t fair. It’s cruel.”

  Mr. Weston could not control his cold fury. All that was warm and kind in him seemed to freeze in front of their eyes.

  “Do you usually entertain your friends with your father’s private affairs?” he asked bitingly. “That is my property. You took it from my room.”

  Tears trembled on Claude’s red-gold lashes.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I ought not to have touched it, but I didn’t know at first that it was yours. I kicked up the corner of the carpet in your room and found it underneath, and I was going to give it to Mrs. Evans. It wasn’t till I was coming downstairs that I opened it, and saw my name inside. Then I had to say something at once – it was the shock of it, Dad! People only make their wills when they know they’re going to die. It can’t be true. I’ve no one but you in all the world. We’ll do everything. We’ll go to doctors, specialists, abroad. I’ll earn the money for you. I know I can. I –”

  “Control yourself, Claude,” said Mr. Weston sharply. “You’re as bad as a man who thinks it’s a sign of death to consult a specialist. Anyone who waits until he is at the point of death before he makes his will is a fool and a coward. Fortunes have been lost before now, because people left it too late before making a will. This is merely a wise precaution. You’re so impulsive.” He stroked the boy’s head caressingly. “Well, now you’ve found it, it might as well be finished. We’ve plenty of witnesses here,” he continued in his normal tone of voice. He took out his fountain-pen and unscrewed the cap. Using his left hand rather awkwardly, he wrote in his name, “William Weston” and signed it at the end. Then he handed the pen to Mr. Winkley. “Mr. Winkley? Thank you. And you, Mr. Gunn? There, that’s done, and don’t let me hear any more nonsense about this from you, Claude. Doctors, indeed! What do I want with doctors?”

  Mr. Winkley looked up at him.

  “By the way, talking about wills,” he said. “Did you hear that Mrs. Mumsby left all her money to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund?”

  Mr. Weston looked politely interested.

  “Really?” he said. “A very worthy institution.”

  Chapter 37

  Claude thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his navy blue corduroy trousers, and kicked at the tiled kerb surrounding the hearth. Pussy and Gunn had gone to play billiards, and his father had gone upstairs, so that he and Mr. Winkley were alone in the hall.

  “I wish I wasn’t so hasty,” he said, frowning. “I’m always making myself look a fool in front of people because I can’t control my feelings. One of these days, I shall fly at someone, and kill them, and then wish I hadn’t when it’s too late. Just look at the times I’ve made an exhibition of myself in this very hall! Over Mother Mumsby, and the monkey, and this will. It’s absurd, but I can’t help it. It’s the way I’m made, I suppose.’’

  “You didn’t lose your temper with the monkey, and kill it, I suppose,” remarked Mr. Winkley.

  “What an idea! Of course not!” exclaimed the boy indignantly.

  “Somebody did,” was the reply. “You said so yourself. You know I can’t help thinking that there’s some connection between the monkey’s death and Mrs. Mumsby’s.”

  Claude clenched his fists.

  “You – you mean that my m–monkey killed her?” he stammered. “That’s haunted me for days. It would mean that I was guilty of m–murder.”

  “It wouldn’t mean anything of the kind,” resumed Mr. Winkley; “and the monkey certainly didn’t kill her. No, I mean that the monkey was killed because it had some connection with Mrs. Mumsby.”

  “But I don’t understand.” Claude looked completely bewildered. “How could –”

  “Let’s try and work it out,” said Mr. Winkley. “You’d like to know who killed your pet, wouldn’t you? Well then, let’s go back to the last time you saw Mrs. Mumsby alive, and see if you can tell me anything about her m– er death.”

  Claude’s eyes dilated with fear.

  “Murder!” he whispered. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? You think she was murdered. Oh, my God! Mother Mumsby!”

  He passed one slender hand over his forehead, and pressed it against his eyes. Then he looked up tragically at Mr. Winkley.

  “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” he repeated in a voice which would have done credit to Henry Irving’s Hamlet.

  Mr. Winkley nodded.

  “But how? When? And who would wish to kill her? She was good, kind-hearted, generous. She didn’t deserve to die.”

  “You’d met her before?” asked Mr. Winkley.

  “No. No, I hadn’t, but I always felt that I’d known her all my life, or in a previous existence, perhaps. You may laugh at that, but all the time something pulled me towards her. Perhaps you didn’t think she was attractive, but I never saw her as she was; I saw her as she used to be years ago – slim, fair and vivacious. I never asked if she did look like that. I never even saw a photograph of her. I just knew – like that! We never spoke of it, but she knew how I felt. It was like seeing someone for the first time in a dream, and then meeting them.” He broke off and looked confused. “Oh, you wouldn’t understand,” he concluded.

  “I probably understand a great deal better than you do,” replied Mr. Winkley. “I suppose you’d like to have her murderer punished?”

  “I’d give anything in the world to help.” the boy said passionately.

  Mr. Winkley crossed one baggy knee of his plus fours over the other.

  “If you’d answer a few questions, it might help,” he said. “I understand that you landed at the beach that day, after Major Jeans. When you drifted past Mrs. Mumsby, she was alive?”

  “Oh yes,” replied Claude. “She waved to us.”

  “That was somewhere abou
t one o’clock, I take it. Then you had lunch. How long did that take?”

  “We were slow about it, I remember. It might have taken half an hour. I couldn’t be sure.”

  “Say one-thirty, then. You had a nap then, you said. How long were you asleep?”

  Claude puckered his forehead in an effort to concentrate.

  “I don’t believe I did go to sleep,” he said at length.

  “But Mr. Gunn distinctly said –”

  “I know,” replied Claude quickly, “but you know how it is. You can nod off for a minute, and kid yourself that you’ve slept for an hour. It can’t be important, anyway.”

  “It might be very important,” said Mr. Winkley. “Perhaps you’ll let me be the judge of that. You were very near to Mrs. Mumsby when she died, and she may have cried out. It may have been that cry which awakened you. Did you look at your watch when you woke up?”

  “No,” said Claude. “I went by the length of time that anyone can practise casting on land. What would you say was the limit, Mr. Winkley?”

  “On dry land?” Mr. Winkley smiled. “Not long, I’ll admit. I used to practise on the lawn when I was a boy, but ten minutes was my limit, until I had the idea of using a bucket of water to make it more realistic. You hear a lot about expert fishermen being able to cast a fly on to a threepenny bit, and so they can. But I bet they don’t practise with one unless it’s under water somewhere. If you knew there were no fish in a lake, you wouldn’t enjoy fishing there. But if there were still no fish and you didn’t know it, you could get your day’s sport just the same.”

  “You’ll admit, then, that I was only asleep for ten minutes,” said Claude. “I dropped off with the combined effect of the sun and the lobster. Dad was practising his casting, with no cast on his line, of course. When I woke up, he was still doing it.”

  “And you didn’t look at your watch?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Claude sounded like a rude child.

  “And you suddenly decided to go off for a walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “But until that time you were with your father?”

  “Yes.” Claude was still sulky.

  “You weren’t away from his observation for even a few minutes? Not long enough, shall we say, to slip over the wall into the next field and back?”

  “No, I was not,” retorted Claude. “Look here, what are you getting at?”

  “I’ll tell you,” replied Mr. Winkley, placing his forefingers together and waggling them. “If Mrs. Mumsby did not die a natural death, there’s a bigger case against you than against anyone else. Those flies didn’t get into her hand accidentally; someone pulled them in. They used a knot which you demonstrated in front of all the visitors in this hotel. The same knot was used in an attempt to strangle Miss Partridge, because she was getting near the truth, and a little knowledge, as we all know, is a dangerous thing. The monkey was killed because it carried a clue to the murderer on its body. The fact that it was near Mrs. Mumsby when she died, shows, too, that someone connected with it had been there just before. Now, you admit that you had the monkey with you all the time. Can you deny that it was you who had just left Mrs. Mumsby’s body? You’ve admitted that one day you’d fly at someone and murder them, and then feel sorry for it. Isn’t that just what happened? You’ve been very clever with all your exhibitions of grief, but you haven’t been quite clever enough. I suggest that you slipped away from your father while his attention was fixed on his casting, killed Mrs. Mumsby, and walked on to the rocks where you say you were fishing.”

  “No, no,” cried the boy. “I’ll admit that I told Pussy and Gunn that I killed her, but I really meant that the monkey might have killed her by jumping on to her neck, and waking her with the shock. And, as he belonged to me, I felt that I was responsible. But if what you say is true, it couldn’t have been that at all. I never meant that I – murdered her.”

  “Oh?”

  Mr. Winkley’s smile was full of disbelief.

  “I’ll admit, too,” went on Claude, “that I found her before the ghillie did. I went away to be sick because it upset me so – I’d been eating lobster, and it had made me squeamish. I didn’t say that I’d found her, at the time, because I was a bit scared. But she was dead when I found her. I told Pussy all about this ages ago.”

  “Oh?” said Mr. Winkley again. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. I suggest that you did kill her. In your agitation, you forgot all about the monkey, and left it behind. When you realized that, you went back and found that the ghillie had arrived a few seconds before. I suggest that lobster for lunch had nothing to do with your being sick. It was the sight of your victim in her death agony. You didn’t intend to kill her, I believe that. You did it on one of your devilish impulses, and by the time that you saw her again, you were sorry for what you’d done.”

  “Anything else?” sneered Claude.

  “The fly was one which you knew could be traced back to Major Jeans,” continued Mr. Winkley, remorselessly. “It was easy enough for you to get hold of the poison. You almost boasted of the fact when you used the ingredients under our very noses in one of your conjuring tricks, the night before you killed her. All murderers are exhibitionists.”

  Claude, trembling with frightened anger, stood for a moment, glaring at Mr. Winkley with a look of mingled hatred and horror in his eyes. Then he turned abruptly, and half-ran, half-stumbled, up the stairs.

  Chapter 38

  After Claude’s sudden indignant departure, Mr. Winkley strolled to the front door to take yet another look at the weather. The wind had not abated; it bent the stripped fuchsia hedges down until they kissed the grey wall behind which they were planted, and whipped the sharp rain in a slanting curtain against the windows. Fishing was obviously out of the question for that day, and, shrugging his shoulders fatalistically, he wandered into the billiard room. He was hailed hilariously by Pussy and Gunn, and sat for a time on the slippery, rounded, leather-covered seat which ran round two sides of the room. But he was restless, and soon drifted out across the hall into the smoking-room.

  He had only just poked the fire, and lit a cigarette, when the door opened, and Mr. Weston walked in.

  “What’s all this that Claude tells me about Mrs. Mumsby being murdered, and you accusing him?” he demanded. “I suppose it’s a joke, but you’ve frightened the life out of him.”

  “It doesn’t take a great deal to frighten him, does it?” replied Mr. Winkley. “But this time, he had plenty of reason to be scared.”

  Mr. Weston moved deliberately over to the fireplace and, clasping his hands behind his back, stood immobile, gazing at Mr. Winkley. The light from the electric bowl, fixed high in the ceiling of the room, cast a light yellow glow over his face, and emphasized the oriental cast of his features.

  At last he spoke again.

  “My son wasn’t very coherent,” he said, “but as I understand it, you really believe that Mrs. Mumsby was murdered. I don’t see how you make that out. The doctor signed the certificate, and everyone was satisfied.”

  “I wasn’t satisfied,” replied Mr. Winkley. “I knew something was wrong, when I saw that salmon fly in her hand. No one could have got a fly stuck in their hand in that position, unless it had been deliberately pulled in. I have every reason to believe that she was killed by means of poison injected into her hand by the hook. Her whole appearance was consistent with prussic acid poisoning.”

  “Ingenious,” remarked Mr. Weston. “And the case against my son?”

  “Is a very strong one,” said Mr. Winkley, crossing one leg over the other in his favourite attitude. “The only means by which that fly could have been pulled into Mrs. Mumsby’s hand was by a delayed slip-knot, such as Claude used in the trick in which I took part. He used a fly made by Major Jeans, hoping to cast suspicion away from himself. But he did not realize at the time that the Major had used some fur off his monkey for the fly’s body, thus casting suspicion back to him. When he discovered this, by seeing a similar f
ly at close quarters in a bright light on a dark background – in fact on Miss Partridge’s black beret – he killed the monkey, so that no one else would trace the fur. Rather a foolish thing to do, for of course anyone could still find plenty of hairs off the monkey scattered over Claude’s clothes, or, for that matter, on yours. He also decided to get hold of all flies of that pattern in the hotel, which again wasn’t clever, but by this time he was in a panic and didn’t stop to think it out logically. It’s the common psychology of a man unused to murder. Nearly all criminals convict themselves sooner or later.”

  “And then?” asked Mr. Weston.

  “He went to Miss Partridge’s room to get the fly, not knowing that I had taken it to London with me to have it scientifically compared with the one which killed Mrs. Mumsby. But he disturbed her before he could finish his search. He was not afraid of being recognized because he was wearing a piece of black material over his head, with slits for his eyes, such as fishermen sometimes use to protect them from the sun. He was not displeased at the opportunity for frightening Miss Partridge, who had been too much interested in his movements, and he had come prepared for such an emergency. He carried a short rod with a piece of trout line already formed into a lasso by means of his slip-knot. The room was high and wide, and Miss Partridge was silhouetted against the window in the moonlight, and he was an expert caster. He succeeded in scaring Miss Partridge, and then, very wisely, let well alone, and made no further attempt to obtain possession of the flies.”

  “Very interesting,” remarked Mr. Weston. “But why pick Claude as the murderer? There must be a motive for murder, and he’d never met her before he came here. Besides, if you’ve ever seen him fish, you’d know that he’s far from being an expert. He could never cast a lasso like that, however good a target Miss Partridge made.”

  “No? Well, he can explain all that to the jury when he’s on trial. If he’s innocent, he’ll have nothing to fear, of course. But he’ll find it difficult to make any jury believe that he’s not guilty. You see he’s the only one who has no alibi for the time of Mrs. Mumsby’s death.”