Knock, Murderer, Knock! Page 24

  “You’d better have two more,” said Miss Lewis, putting the glass on the table.

  “No, no, please, no. Such a waste. I can see them quite clearly just under the table. If you wouldn’t mind getting them for me... I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance, but... my head...”

  Miss Lewis bent down and peered under the table.

  “They must have rolled right underneath,” she said, pressing her chin down on her chest to see better.

  She heard a slight click behind her, and in the next instant a shout, “Stop her!” As she stood up, she had a confused impression of flailing arms, and the chair in front of the fire overturned with a crash. The door burst open, and Dr. Williams rushed in, followed by several police constables.

  The doctor came straight across the room and put his arms round his secretary.

  “Are you safe?” he asked anxiously. “She didn’t…?”

  “I’m all right,” said Miss Lewis with a tremulous little smile, “only terribly scared.”

  The constables relieved Palk and Jago of the struggling fury they could scarcely master, and held her in their midst. Inspector Palk laid his hand on the prisoner’s shoulder and she ceased struggling.

  “Ada Rogers,” he said, “I...” He hesitated and peered closely into her face. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “It’s... it’s…”

  “Miss Astill,” finished Mr. Winkley, “and here” – stooping to pick up something from the floor – “here is the weapon and the handle.”

  “How could I be expected to recognize anyone in that get-up?” asked Palk, indicating the shapeless garment which Miss Astill was endeavouring to wrap round herself, “and how the hell can I be expected to see anything without lights?”

  The sergeant stepped across the room and pressed down the switch, illuminating a light in the centre of the large, airy room and one over the dressing-table.

  The object which Mr. Winkley was holding out to Palk was a steel knitting-needle of a pattern with which they were all familiar. It was fixed firmly into a handle made from a small, corrugated horn, such as is used to form the handle of a carving knife, coloured in mixed shades of yellow, blue and gold.

  “What the...?” ejaculated Palk, pulling the needle out and inspecting the handle.

  Sergeant Jago pounced upon Miss Astill’s work-bag which lay on the floor, and held it towards the Inspector.

  “Here you are, sir,” he said. “Her bag! However did we come to miss it?”

  Inspector Palk looked down and recognized the same bag which he had searched so carefully during his first interview with Miss Astill.

  It was a large, soft bag, made of heavy tapestry material gathered on to a double steel frame. On one side the steel frame was bent upwards and the two ends fitted into each end of a coloured horn handle; on the other side the steel ends were bare and the horn handle was missing. Palk fitted the handle he held in his hands in place, and the two hooked ends of steel clipped into position, on the principle of a toilet-roll holder. He slipped it out again and inspected it.

  “Very ingenious,” said Mr. Winkley. “The steel frame of the bag must be exactly the same size as the knitting-needles. The hole probably decreases very slightly towards the end to give the grip. But if the hole runs right through...”

  “It doesn’t,” said Palk, holding the end of the handle up to the light. “There must be a thick wall of steel towards the end so that there is plenty of resistance when a blow is struck with the needle.”

  He fitted the handle on the bag again and handed it to Sergeant Jago. “To think,” he added savagely, “that that blasted woman thriller-writer, Mrs. Dawson, was right all the time! She said it was Miss Astill, and she said we should find the handle right under our noses. Why, I actually had that bag in my hands!” He again went up to Miss Astill, who had made no further attempt to struggle, and put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Ephemia Mary Astill,” he said, “I arrest you for the attempted murder of Gwynneth Lewis. Also for the murders of Antonia Blake, Winifred Mary Marston, and Robert Henry Dawson, and I have to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

  “That doesn’t apply to me: I’m the daughter of a cavalry officer,” said Miss Astill calmly. Then her dull-brown eyes blazed as if lighted by a deep-white flame, and her face became suffused with colour. “Why did you come?” she cried, spitting through her broken, yellowed teeth in sudden excitement. “In another minute she would have been dead. Another harlot removed from the paths of the righteous. She would have tempted the doctor, but he shall never lie on her breast. The Master speaks to his hand-maiden. He calleth her to service. The paths of the chosen people must be cleansed from the stains of sin. Naked women and bawdy men shall go no more a-whoring. Foul-mouthed children, aping lechery in their play, shall play no more. The first-born of Egypt shall be slain. You must let me go or I cannot answer for the consequences. Mine is the task, mine the labour. The Hydro has become a brothel; it must be made white as driven snow. The task of cleaning the Augean stables is a responsible one: I and Hercules together...” Her voice ran into fancies so foul that Gwynneth put her hands to her ears and hid her face against the doctor’s shoulder.

  Sergeant Jago made a step forward, thinking to try and stop the filthy stream of words, but Dr. Williams shook his head, and with a motion of his free hand, signalled to him to remain where he was.

  At last the profanities died away into indistinguishable mutterings. Dr. Williams put Gwynneth away from him and walked slowly over to Miss Astill.

  “Now, Miss Astill,” he said in clear, professional tones, “you have had a lot of worry lately, and you’re very run down. I’m going to send you away for a holiday, and these people are going to take care of you. Your work is finished now, and you must go where you will be safe.”

  “My enemies encompass me around,” she said, drooping dejectedly. Then she raised her head and stared at the doctor with her old, dull expression. “You understand,” she said. “You always did. I am loyal to the doctor and I have the King’s shoe. They want to kill me for it, but Heaven will guard me. I am ready.”

  The doctor nodded to Palk, who gave whispered instructions to Sergeant Jago. The constables urged their prisoner forward. Miss Astill drew up her thin shoulders, marked time with an elaborate goose-step, and marched along in their midst without a backward glance.

  The four people left in the bedroom stood still until all sound of the little procession had died away. Then they relaxed, their hands fumbling for cigarettes and matches.

  “Thank the Lord that’s over!” exclaimed Palk, wiping his brow. “Mad as a hatter, of course. She’ll never hang. Well, I always knew she was a suspect, but it beats me how you found her out unless you discovered more evidence than I did, Mr. Winkley, and I still don’t know how she managed to murder Winnie Marston. I hate to drag you over to Newton St. Mary at this hour of the morning” – he glanced at his watch – “but I flatly refuse to allow you to go to bed until you’ve told me all about it. If you insist on my having all the kudos in this affair, the least you can do is to tell me how I solved it so brilliantly!”

  “Them’s my sentiments too,” said the doctor. “What about coming down to my sitting-room? There’s a big fire there, and I told them to put out the whisky –”

  He broke off abruptly, for Mr. Winkley and Inspector Palk were already outside the door.

  Chapter 42

  Twenty minutes later, they were all sitting round a blazing fire in the doctor’s private sitting-room, and even Miss Lewis held a glass of whisky-and-soda in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Inspector Palk held his heavy, broad-shouldered body almost upright, as though he still felt himself to be on duty; Mr. Winkley’s long, thin figure was so stretched out that it scarcely seemed to touch the chair at all; the doctor leaned back with the unstudied ease of a man in his own home, looking slightly less immaculate and less dignified than usual; and Miss Lewis propped herself contentedly against the ar
m of her arm-chair, with her slim, bare legs drawn up beneath her, in a position in which every man present found it impossible to believe she could be comfortable. She laughingly waved away the offers of their three chairs, and for several minutes they smoked in silence.

  ‘If you don’t begin,” said Palk at length, “I shall fall asleep in this very comfortable chair and lay myself open to a charge of neglect of duty while under the influence of drink. At least I have drink taken, as they put it in Ireland.”

  Mr. Winkley breathed a stream of reflective smoke down his nostrils.

  “I’m quite willing to tell you all that I know,” he said, “but I warn you that you mustn’t expect an exposition of brilliant deduction or sparkling humour. I’m not an Ellery Queen, nor a Peter Wimsey, nor do I possess the Gallic wit of Poirot. We derided Sergeant Jago’s tendency to model his deductions on those of the latest thriller he had read, but to a certain extent we allowed ourselves to be misled in the same way.”

  “Why?” exclaimed Palk. “I never read thrillers.”

  “I know,” replied Mr. Winkley. “What I mean is that we disregarded the obvious. We spoke of trying to take each individual suspect away from the Hydro in order to judge him better against a saner background. What we should have done was to concentrate on the background and evolve the most likely solution from it. When I first arrived at the Hydro, it struck me as strange that such a thing as a crime of passion or greed, such as we took Miss Blake’s murder to be, could have taken place against a background of such respectability. I could have understood it if Miss Blake’s murder had been an outside job, but it did not seem to fit otherwise. The ruling characteristics of the Hydro were scandal and old ladies, and it seemed to me that only by fitting both of these factors into the murders should we ever reach the truth. That is why I adopted the pose of a rather foolish man who dabbles in detection, so that I could absorb the atmosphere of the place. When at last I got a clue to the murderer, it seemed so obvious that the Hydro should produce what might well be called ‘The Case of the Suppressed Spinster,’ that I felt justified in playing my hunch. The trouble is, as I say, that writers of detective fiction have become so ingenious in evolving newer and better solutions to crimes, that we are apt to consider the suppression theory old-fashioned, whereas in reality it is far more common in real life than the family curse or the cousin from Australia.”

  “That’s true enough, I suppose,” agreed Palk, “but after all, we knew Miss Astill was a suspect. I still can’t imagine how you came to work it all out.”

  “You’d have worked it out for yourself in time,” replied Mr. Winkley. “I had a hunch that showed me a short cut, that’s all, and living as I did amongst the residents, I had a better chance to get the feeling of the place. As I told you, Inspector, I have to solve problems in my department at the Yard by hunches, because they aren’t sent to me at all until they have been exposed to the X-ray of official investigation without showing any result. I had a start on you because I had no preconceived ideas to get rid of.”

  “Sir H– er – Harry the Punter being my preconceived idea,” grunted Palk.

  “That’s it,” grinned Mr. Winkley.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt you by asking questions,” said Miss Lewis, “but... Harry the Punter... who is he?”

  Palk explained, then asked Mr. Winkley to continue.

  “Yes,” went on Mr. Winkley, “you already had fixed solutions to the first two crimes with plenty of evidence to justify yourself. But I was so sure that both murders were the work of one hand that I at once dismissed ‘Sir Humphrey,’ because he was in gaol at the time of the second murder, and I dismissed Matthews because I couldn’t connect him to the first murder. Having washed out your two chief suspects, I had a whippet’s start. The doctor is my friend and so I didn’t suspect him” – Palk moved uneasily in his chair – “though officially, no doubt, I ought to have done. Also, it was he who asked me to come down to investigate and he would hardly have done that if he’d been guilty.”

  “Not I,” laughed the doctor. “I have far too great a respect for your reputation.”

  “Well, I suspected everyone else, although from the beginning I didn’t really think it was a man’s murder. Men are habitually suspicious of instruments such as knitting-needles and hatpins, and though Colonel Simcox used knitting-needles for his socks, I thought he was telling the truth when he said he’d use his Service revolver if he’d wanted to kill anyone. I didn’t seriously suspect the staff, apart from Nurse Hawkins, nor the Marstons, and that again narrowed things down to about half a dozen of the female of the species.”

  “I always had a feeling that it was Mrs. Napier,” put in Miss Lewis, “when I wasn’t too busy to think about it at all. After all, she is the most abnormal one of the lot.”

  “Well, of course, I examined the case against her very carefully,” replied Mr. Winkley, “but I decided that although she might quite conceivably commit a murder, she was not cunning enough to have kept quiet about it. She was jealous if anyone but herself was in the limelight. Her presence at all the scenes of the crimes was an attempt to take our attention off everyone else and focus it upon her: witness, for instance, her appearance on the scene of each crime to create an impression as dramatic as possible upon us all. This was so in the baths, and again after Bobby’s murder, and even at the scene of my reconstruction of Miss Blake’s murder. But there was no sign of her immediately after Miss Blake’s actual murder, simply because she hadn’t heard about it. She was even willing to confess to a crime she knew she hadn’t done just for the sake of what Mrs. Dawson would call ‘publicity.’”

  “That woman!” muttered Inspector Palk under his breath.

  “Mrs. Napier’s actions were queer and abnormal,” continued Mr. Winkley, ignoring the interruption, “but they were impulsive rather than planned, while the murders gave the impression that they were well thought out and planned.”

  “You never seemed to suspect Lady Warme or the Admiral,” remarked the doctor.

  “Palk eliminated them for me,” returned Mr. Winkley. “The Admiral couldn’t stand without holding on to something, and the person who struck such a blow must have had the good timing dependent on a perfect balance, or the one vital spot would have been missed. As for Lady Warme, she was having treatment for her shoulder which was so stiff that she could not have raised her arm high enough to lend sufficient force to the blow. She had no knowledge of anatomy either, as far as I could discover. It is not a necessary attribute for the sale of grocery except in so far as it is needed for dissecting a side of bacon.”

  “A fine hydropathic remark,” laughed Dr. Williams. “Well, I quite frankly suspected Nurse Hawkins.” he went on, “and that’s partly why I sent for you. She had the knowledge and strength to strike the blows; she had the best opportunity of anyone to kill Winnie Marston; she acted in a suspicious and almost furtive manner when anyone questioned her, and I was really afraid to let her attend the patients for fear of another tragedy, but, of course, after the second murder, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them into the baths any more.”

  “I considered her,” said Mr. Winkley, “but I kept an open mind. Her furtive manner when answering questions showed that she had something to hide, but it was always possible that it was something of great importance to herself rather than to the case. I watched her carefully, and I noticed that she broke a number of rules which would have got her into trouble if you had found her out. She smoked pretty frequently when on duty, for instance, and there was quite a lot of truth in Mrs. Napier’s assertion that the nurse neglected her, for she slipped away whenever she had a chance. However, I decided that it was nothing more than the desire to keep herself in Admiral Urwin’s eye. You see, I didn’t turn a deaf ear to all the scandal in the Hydro. It is my experience that scandal is generally based on a bit of truth which becomes distorted as it travels.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Miss Lewis, “Nurse Hawkins told me yesterday that she
is officially engaged to the Admiral, but she asked me to say nothing about it until this affair was cleared up. All the nurses are the same. People talk about them being keen on their jobs, but they would all rather be married. They come here to try and get off with some rich bachelor or widower, and usually begin by setting their caps at the doctor.” The whisky gave her the courage to smile roguishly at him.

  “That’s the first I’ve heard about it,” he returned.

  Palk took out his pipe and, having asked permission, began to pack it with tobacco.

  “I must say I suspected Mrs. Dawson,” he said, “and I’m almost sorry it wasn’t her, for it would have made a very pretty case. It seemed too much of a coincidence that she should have actually planned the murder of Miss Blake with a knitting-needle, on paper only. You can never be sure of women; they’re all a little unbalanced, if you’ll forgive my saying so, Miss Lewis. Mrs. Dawson might have got so taken up with all her murder-story writing that she wanted to get her information at first hand. It might have turned her brain so that she got her identity mixed and actually committed a murder when she thought she had only written about it.”

  “As you say, Inspector,” smiled Mr. Winkley, “it would have made a pretty case and she certainly seemed a most suspicious character. But I borrowed the manuscripts of her two previous books from the agents, and they convinced me that she couldn’t even plan a murder, let alone carry it out. She would have left a complete paper-chase of clues behind her. Her books are robust affairs with plenty of blood and a great sense of the dramatic. All the same, I understand that her brilliant first novel, Murder in the Hydro, has already been accepted on the strength of the publicity she obtained by being at the Hydro during the murders. And she wanted the money to educate her son, poor soul!”

  ‘Then you suspected Ada Rogers,” said the doctor.