Speedy Death Read online

  ‘Oh, it is a kind of silk net which we wear on our heads at night. It keeps your wave the right shape, and keeps your hair lying flat instead of its getting sort of bent up and funny, and looking peculiar in the morning,’ Dorothy explained. ‘They drive you mad the first night or two, but you get used to them,’ she added naïvely.

  ‘Thank you. Your exposition is most clear,’ said the Chief Constable gravely, while the inspector, who had finished writing for the moment, openly grinned.

  ‘Yes, you placed the—er—the hair-net upon the model. And then?’

  ‘And then I put my dressing-gown where I always put it, and my bedroom slippers in position—to carry out the idea that it was really myself in the bed, you know—and then I walked along to Mrs Bradley’s room and slept in one of the twin beds there.’

  ‘I see. Was Mrs Bradley in bed then?’

  ‘Yes, she was sitting up in bed, reading. But when she had spoken to me—just a casual word or two—she lay down, and, I suppose, went to sleep. It was the horrible scream that woke us both.’

  ‘I see. Now, Miss Clark, I want you to think very carefully before answering my next question.’

  Dorothy steeled her nerves, for, although the tone was quiet and urbane, the remark had a sinister ring. She recollected, with a chilly feeling about her shoulder-blades, that this kindly grey-haired man who sat opposite was the representative of the law. She drew a deep breath.

  ‘Yes?’ she inquired, moistening her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

  ‘Have you any idea whether Mrs Bradley remained in the room all the time from when you both went to bed until the scream aroused the house?’

  Dorothy wrinkled her brow. ‘I am sure she did,’ she answered slowly. ‘As I said, my nerves have been in such a silly state since that smash I was in that the very slightest sound wakes me. And I did not wake up. And I drank nothing to make me sleep, nothing at all. And Mrs Bradley’s door makes a grating sound over the carpet as you pull it open. And my bed was near the door. And her bed creaks when you sit up or turn over, or move about on it. And——’

  The Chief Constable interrupted her, laughing.

  ‘I think you have proved your point, Miss Clark,’ he said. ‘I am willing to believe that Mrs Bradley did not leave the bedroom between the times that I mentioned. Now, about that scream. It frightened you, I dare say?’

  Dorothy sat bolt upright in her chair.

  ‘Frightened me?’ she cried. ‘It was too horrible for words. I nearly died. I believe I should die if I heard it again. It was a scream of most dreadful terror.’

  ‘Was Mrs Bradley scared?’

  ‘She woke up, of course. But, if she was scared, she did not show it. She just got out of bed and went to see what had happened.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, I went with her. I didn’t want to go in the least, but I just felt I couldn’t bear to be left alone. Do you know the sort of feeling?’

  ‘I can imagine it,’ replied the Chief Constable, hiding a smile.

  ‘Well, what did you both see?’

  ‘Oh, nothing but a crowd of people—servants too, you know—who were collected round Eleanor and were all trying to talk to her at once.’

  ‘Oh, yes. And you joined them?’

  ‘I followed Mrs Bradley. Father—Mr Bing, I mean—ordered the servants away, and we were able to hear what poor Eleanor had to say.’

  ‘And what had she to say?’

  ‘Oh, just that she had been into my room to ask me for some aspirin tablets for her neuralgia, and that I was not there, and that she had seen something which frightened her, and that she ran out screaming.’

  ‘Oh, she said that, did she? Got it down, inspector?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The inspector finished his notes and handed the book to his superior.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I’d like you to hear it, Miss Clark, and then you will be able to tell us if we have your statement down correctly.’

  He read it aloud to her, precisely, accurately, and without any expression in his voice at all.

  ‘That is correct?’ he asked, when he had finished.

  ‘Yes. That is quite correct,’ answered Dorothy.

  ‘You would be prepared to swear to all this in a court of law?’

  ‘Will it be—surely it won’t be necessary, will it?’

  Then as the two policemen made no verbal reply, she added:

  ‘It is all quite true, so far as my knowledge goes.’

  ‘And your memory,’ said the inspector, with a little smile at his chief.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorothy, ‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’

  ‘Very good. Well, now, Miss Clark, we come to the point. Who, in this house, had any reason to wish you dead?’

  The girl, shocked by the bluntness of the question, half-rose, sat down again, bit her lip, swallowed, turned red and then white, and at last burst out:

  ‘You mustn’t ask me! You mustn’t ask me! Really, I don’t know! It was only my fancy! I ought never to have mentioned it!’

  ‘Come, now, Miss Clark!’

  The official voice was stern. The official eye bored into her brain.

  ‘Answer me. The truth, mind!’

  Dorothy stood up and thrust back her chair from the table. Her slender hands were clenched at her sides.

  ‘It can’t matter now,’ she said, in a curious voice totally unlike her own. ‘I will tell you. It was Eleanor who hated me. She always has. But she didn’t try to kill me last night. I’m sure she didn’t!’

  ‘And why are you sure?’ asked the Chief Constable.

  ‘If she did! Oh, but she didn’t! She couldn’t have done! She couldn’t! It would be too horrible!’

  ‘Yes, I agree, Miss Clark,’ said the inspector, in a peculiar tone. He glanced at his chief. ‘Fingerprints might settle the matter, sir.’

  ‘On the poker, you mean? Well, yes, perhaps. Dangerous evidence, though. Very dangerous evidence,’ murmured the Chief Constable. ‘Still, we will see.’

  He walked to the door and held it open for Dorothy to pass out. Then he rang the bell, and, upon Mander’s appearing, sent him to fetch Garde Bing.

  ‘Ah, sit down, Mr Bing,’ he said when Garde entered.

  Garde sat down.

  ‘Strongly attached to your sister, Mr Bing?’

  Garde sat up with a jerk, stared into the Chief Constable’s eyes, and decided promptly to tell this man the truth.

  ‘No,’ he replied curtly.

  ‘No?’ repeated the police officer. ‘Before or after you knew of your sister’s inimical feelings towards your fiancée? Miss Clark is your fiancée, I believe?’

  ‘Oh, Dorothy—yes. I didn’t know that Eleanor didn’t like her. That is news to me, I assure you. Sis is never demonstrative, you know.’

  The Chief Constable glanced at the inspector.

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ the latter said, in answer to the unspoken question. So Garde was politely dismissed.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, Mr Bing,’ the inspector called after him down the hall.

  Garde retraced his steps.

  ‘You won’t let anyone handle that poker, will you? You know the one I mean. I expect we shall want to take it away with us.’

  ‘I will see that it is not touched,’ the young man promised. ‘I don’t think anyone has handled it so far.’

  The next victim was Carstairs.

  ‘Ah, Mr Carstairs!’ The Chief Constable shook hands with a smile. ‘I am sorry to have to question you about this affair, but my duty must be done.’

  Carstairs smiled.

  ‘I am entirely at your service,’ he said, seating himself.

  ‘Well, now, Mr Carstairs, who killed Mountjoy?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge,’ said Carstairs, in his precise, dry way, ‘Mountjoy was the victim of an accident.’

  ‘Is that really your opinion?’ said the inspector.

  ‘It is—now,’ replied Carstairs quietly.

  The two p
olicemen looked at him, but Carstairs merely smiled at them urbanely, and volunteered no further statement.

  ‘Hum! Thank you, Mr Carstairs,’ said the Chief Constable, hiding his disappointment.

  Carstairs rose to go.

  ‘And yet, Mr Carstairs,’ said the inspector, ‘I could swear that yesterday you thought very differently.’

  ‘A scientist,’ said Carstairs, with his hand on the doorknob, ‘hardly ever thinks exactly alike two days running.’

  He nodded cheerfully to them and went out.

  ‘Of course,’ said the Chief Constable thoughtfully, ‘he won’t be able to shuffle like that in the witness-box.’

  ‘You think it will come to that, sir? So do I,’ said the inspector. ‘So does he, if the truth were known,’ he added, ‘and, for all his cheerfulness, he doesn’t care for the thought one little bit.’

  ‘I think we’ll have Mrs Bradley next,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Perhaps she will be good enough to tell us why she took that girl to sleep in her room last night.’

  Mrs Bradley was more than willing to tell them that, and quite a lot in addition.

  ‘To begin with,’ she said, ‘I would like to make a statement. You can question me about it afterwards.’

  Feeling ridiculously like a very small boy in the presence of his teacher, the Chief Constable bowed.

  ‘Take it, inspector, will you?’ he said.

  ‘I am making this statement quite voluntarily,’ Mrs Bradley began, ‘because I feel that my duty as a citizen compels me to do so. I am a member of the electorate of this country,’ she added impressively.

  ‘Quite so,’ murmured the Chief Constable, trying to accustom his eyes to the rainbow hues of Mrs Bradley’s jumper, and at the same time to compose his mind to listen to what she was saying.

  ‘I was invited to stay at this house by Mr Francis Garde Bing, whom I was instrumental in saving from police-court proceedings on the night of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. The details, although intensely interesting and very instructive from a psychological point of view (I have incorporated them in my Small Handbook of Psycho-Analysis, to be published next month), are irrelevant here, so I will pass over them. The young man gratefully invited me to spend a holiday at his house, and, upon the invitation being confirmed by his sister, Eleanor Bing, I accepted it, and arrived here in the last week of July. Eleanor interested me from the first.

  ‘“Here is a woman,” I said to myself, “young, exceedingly healthy, but a slave to her father’s house and to her father’s hobby. What repressed desires, what unsatisfied cravings for enjoyment and for freedom lie walled up behind those shortsighted eyes?” I was intensely curious about Eleanor Bing, and intensely interested in her psychological make-up.’

  She paused. The two men nodded.

  ‘Staying in the house at this time,’ Mrs Bradley continued, ‘was, of course, the woman, Mountjoy. We all thought that Mountjoy was a man.

  ‘Obviously Eleanor Bing thought so too, for, shortly after my arrival, they became engaged to be married. And, less than a fortnight later, Mountjoy met her death.’

  She paused again. Then she turned to the Chief Constable.

  ‘I think you had doubts yesterday as to the cause of that death,’ she said, fixing him with her beady eyes.

  ‘Frankly, Mrs Bradley, I think Mountjoy was murdered,’ Sir Joseph said quietly. ‘My investigations, and the very considerable help rendered me by Mr Carstairs, made that conclusion almost inevitable.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Joseph,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Then if I tell you that I had cause to believe that the murderer of Mountjoy had designs also upon the life of Dorothy Clark, you will not be surprised that, unknown to the rest of the household, I took the girl into my room?’

  ‘We should like to hear upon what assumption you based your conclusion that the girl’s life would be attempted by the murderer,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘And, of course, we should be interested to know the identity of the murderer.’

  Mrs Bradley smiled.

  ‘I haven’t any proofs which a jury would consider evidence,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you what I thought. I am not easily shocked or intimidated, gentlemen, and I will confess at once that when I heard that Mountjoy was dead, my first feeling was one of vague irritation. Deaths always signify an outbreak of sickly piety, of hushed voices, of funeral furnishings; they augur a suspension of gaieties, of light conversation, of entertaining quarrels, of intellectual argument.

  ‘My next feeling was one of interest in observing the reaction of various members of the household to the news. Mr Carstairs was genuinely grieved. The rest of the persons in the house appeared not so much as to turn a hair. Very interesting, gentlemen, don’t you think?’

  She glanced first at one and then at the other, with a bird-like motion of the head which appeared to disconcert them considerably.

  ‘Very interesting,’ said the Chief Constable feebly. ‘Please continue.’

  ‘Then along came Mr Carstairs with his conviction that Mountjoy had been murdered. He did a little private detective work on his own. Then we went to the police, the result of whose investigations you know better than I do.

  ‘Mr Carstairs and I discussed the case, and I think I was instrumental in suggesting to him the identity of Mountjoy’s murderer.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Chief Constable, leaning forward. ‘Who murdered Mountjoy, Mrs Bradley?’

  ‘Until this morning,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly, ‘I should have said it was Eleanor Bing. Now I am not at all sure that anyone murdered Mountjoy. I think she was the victim of an accident.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Revelations

  THE CHIEF CONSTABLE tapped the table thoughtfully with the tips of his fingers.

  ‘I should be interested to know how you fixed on Eleanor, and how you could have proved your point,’ he said.

  ‘I told you I could not prove anything,’ Mrs Bradley reminded him. ‘I could not prove it, but I could have suggested a motive.’

  ‘Motive?’ It was the inspector’s turn to lean forward. ‘That has puzzled me a good deal since yesterday—the apparent absence of motive.’

  ‘I present to you,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘the picture of a woman, twenty-eight to thirty years of age, intelligent and healthy, but emotionally starved. One day a man comes into her life. True, he is not the tall, mighty, god-like creature of her girlhood dreams, but he is a man, he is a scientist, he has explored the waste places of the earth, he has dared climates, diseases, wild beasts, and wilder men. They find mutual attraction in one another’s society. And, one evening, the woman discovers her heart to the man, and Eleanor and Mountjoy became affianced.’

  ‘The feature of this case which I have not yet been able to fathom,’ said the Chief Constable slowly, ‘is why the woman Mountjoy ever allowed herself to become formally engaged to poor Miss Bing. After all, it was a cruel thing to deceive a woman like that. And she must have known that marriage was an impossibility.’

  ‘I have thought out two possible explanations,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘either of which will cover the facts as we know them. It may be that Mountjoy was urgently in need of money. Eleanor Bing possessed a fairly comfortable little fortune, and the other woman may have intended to carry out the tragicomedy of marrying Eleanor, secure in the certainty that her unfortunate dupe’s fear of ridicule would result in her keeping Mountjoy’s sex a secret.’

  The Chief Constable slowly nodded, while the inspector made rapid notes.

  ‘The other explanation,’ went on Mrs Bradley, ‘may sound to you extraordinary, but it is more probably the correct one. Have you heard of sexual perversion?’

  The Chief Constable nodded.

  ‘Not a pleasant subject,’ he said briefly.

  ‘I do not propose to discuss it,’ Mrs Bradley assured him, ‘but I do suggest to you that Mountjoy may have formed a very real and, for the time being, a very strong attachment to Eleanor Bing.’

  ‘It is a possibi
lity, of course,’ said the Chief Constable in a tone which proved that he did not consider it anything of the kind.

  ‘Whatever happened,’ pursued Mrs Bradley, ‘one thing must be regarded as certain. In some way or another Eleanor Bing soon discovered the truth about her lover.’

  The inspector slapped his knee.

  ‘Motive!’ he almost shouted. ‘Motive for the murder! Revenge on the person who had deceived her!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Bradley placidly. ‘That’s what I should have said—until this morning.’

  There followed a short but pregnant silence. Then the Chief Constable said:

  ‘That is certainly a very ingenious theory, Mrs Bradley. It certainly provides a motive, and a strong motive for the crime.’

  Mrs Bradley smiled in her reptilian manner.

  ‘Did they tell you about the watch?’ she asked.

  ‘The watch?’

  ‘The watch belonging to Mountjoy, which was discovered by me at the bottom of the washstand jug.’

  ‘What about the watch, Mrs Bradley!’ The Chief Constable looked puzzled.

  ‘Drowned watch, drowned woman,’ said Mrs Bradley cryptically. ‘Just another little proof that Mountjoy was murdered and did not die as the result of an accident.’ She cackled with grim, sardonic amusement, and then added: ‘I think that concludes my voluntary statement, gentlemen.’

  ‘Which means that if we want any further information, we must ask for it,’ chuckled the Chief Constable. ‘Well, thank you for your very enlightening remarks, Mrs Bradley. Now, just one question. Will you tell us exactly why you took Miss Clark into your bedroom last night? I gather, of course, that you thought someone might make an attempt on her life, but what gave you that impression? For I presume it was not mere guesswork or scare-mongering on your part.’

  ‘Oh, I had my reasons,’ Mrs Bradley answered. She stared absent-mindedly out of the window for a little while, and then turned basilisk eyes on the police officers.

  ‘I knew that Eleanor would kill the girl if she could,’ she announced calmly.

  ‘But how could you know such a thing?’ cried the Chief Constable. ‘That is what we would like to know. What put the thought into your head?’