Speedy Death Read online

  ‘Well, for one thing, Eleanor is quite mad, you know,’ said Mrs Bradley kindly. ‘And mad people do such queer things, don’t you think?’

  The Chief Constable moved restlessly.

  ‘I think you are wrong. I have talked with Miss Bing this morning, and I never saw anyone who appeared more entirely in possession of all her mental faculties,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Well, then I need not say any more,’ Mrs Bradley pointed out. ‘I thought you wanted to know why I took Dorothy to sleep in my room. That is all.’

  ‘You say that you knew Eleanor Bing would make an attempt on her life?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Mrs Bradley beamed on him as upon a favourite pupil. The inspector grinned behind his hand.

  ‘And I think the discovery of that dummy figure with its head staved in, and a heavy poker lying near, justified my assumptions,’ she added.

  The inspector hitched his shoulders irritably.

  ‘I suggest that it is quite as likely you went in and did the damage yourself,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s not an impossible theory, is it?’

  Mrs Bradley cackled gleefully.

  ‘My word!’ she said happily. ‘That is a very clever thought of yours, now, isn’t it! Of course I might! I never thought of that! But still, you know, there was the clock. You haven’t heard about the clock yet.’

  The inspector turned an unfortunately audible expletive into a hacking cough, and avoided his chief’s eye.

  Mrs Bradley, however, was perfectly serious.

  ‘I didn’t tell you how she smashed the clock,’ she said. ‘You’d like to hear about the clock, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What clock?’ The Chief Constable was becoming restive again.

  ‘The Freudian clock. Dorothy’s clock,’ explained Mrs Bradley, waving her hands with what was intended to be an explanatory gesture.

  ‘I am afraid I don’t understand.’ The Chief Constable was obviously becoming bored.

  ‘No?’ Mrs Bradley, more bird-like than ever, put her head on one side and pursed her little beaky mouth at him. ‘You wouldn’t. But you may take my word for it. Smashed clock, smashed woman. My dear man, she positively flung it on the ground when she saw them kissing! The most interesting thing I’ve ever seen! I shall incorporate the incident in my Handbook of Psycho-Analysis. Beautiful! Beautiful! The incident, I mean, not my book, although the latter will be half price to police officials, post free. Signed copies one guinea extra. Can I put your name down?’

  She smiled in a terrifyingly mirthless way, and the Chief Constable rose.

  ‘I think we are wasting time, madam,’ he said shortly, going to the door and holding it open. ‘I think, inspector,’ he added, turning his head towards his subordinate, who had also risen and was finding it hard work to keep his countenance, ‘that we had better apply for a warrant to search the house. I like to trust the evidence of my own eyes.’

  ‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’ sighed Mrs Bradley ecstatically, as she passed out of the room. But whether she was referring to the Chief Constable’s eyes, or to something else, it is difficult to say.

  When the door had closed behind her, the Chief Constable stared frowningly out of the window for a moment, and then turned briskly to the inspector.

  ‘Let’s go and have some food,’ he suggested. ‘That woman unnerves me.’

  ‘You don’t really think she placed the poker there after she herself had smashed in the dummy’s mask, do you?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘Well, I cannot say until you have the finger-prints from that poker. We might learn something from them, although they are like figures, you know—a clever criminal can do almost anything with them. Still, we’ll see whose they are before we start to generalize about them. If they do turn out to be Mrs Bradley’s she had better look out for herself. Oh, and that is another thing. We ought, I think, to have a further interview with Miss Eleanor. That drowning business was certainly not accidental, because, apart from the rather conclusive bruises on her neck, surely anybody who felt faint would at least have the ordinary common sense to turn away from a bath full of water before she swooned; and if it was attempted suicide—well, it was a very queer way of going about the business. It would require some hardihood, you know, to bend over the side of a bath and hold your head under water until you were drowned. Besides, the bruises. The bruises ought to be conclusive.’

  ‘Why should she attempt to commit suicide, anyway?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘True. There is that point to be considered. That is partly why I want you to search the house, as a matter of fact. Papers, letters, diaries—all sorts of things like that might give us a line to follow up. You see, the bother with people of this class is that you can’t bully them as you would the cottagers. They are too well-educated, and too well-balanced, and they know that the police are hedged in and hampered and red-taped until it is a wonder we can do any work at all in the detection of criminals. Oh, it’s silly! Silly! I know they know all about it, and I know they won’t tell us anything until you arrest somebody on suspicion—and even that may not open their mouths. Look at this Bradley woman, for example. She may decide to make away with both these other young women, and be planning to kill a few more people for all we know.’ He laughed good-humouredly, but the inspector scowled.

  ‘I don’t like the look nor the sound of that Mrs Bradley,’ he said. ‘And, unless I’m much mistaken, she is a very cool customer and needs watching. That statement of hers! A pack of lies from beginning to end, I expect. Why else did she give it to us?’

  ‘Oh, come, come!’ said the Chief Constable, smiling, ‘we can’t say that she’s untruthful. At least, not so far as we know.’

  ‘Oh, everybody is untruthful nowadays,’ the inspector rejoined gloomily.

  ‘What about the “Blue Boar” for lunch?’ said the Chief Constable soothingly.

  Mrs Bradley found Carstairs in the orchard smoking his pipe.

  ‘Well,’ he said, as she joined him under the trees, ‘is the inquisition over?’

  ‘The poor things don’t know what to believe and what to scoff at as incredible. They haven’t the least idea as to what is germane to their case, and what they can safely leave out. And they are now having bets with one another as to whether Eleanor was really a killer and tried to commit suicide because she knew she was going to be found out—or because she was overtaken by remorse; or whether a beneficent Providence nearly laid her low in her moment of supreme triumph; or whether I tried to kill her after having carefully faked evidence against her with masked dummies and pokers and incantations and moonlight flittings; or whether——’

  Carstairs, laughing, interrupted her.

  ‘I gather you are not greatly impressed by our guardians of the law,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I dare say they are well enough,’ answered Mrs Bradley, shrugging her shoulders. ‘How they hate me, though! It is most astonishing. Besides, I told the truth, so far as I knew it.’

  She cackled harshly.

  ‘I am afraid this is not one of your lucky days,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘Who is the next victim of the inquisition?’

  ‘I don’t know. You, I should think. Although you are persona grata with the Chief Constable, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am his little ewe Iamb,’ said Carstairs modestly. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I could murder the whole lot of you, and, although I should be the only one left alive, Sir Joseph would think it so unfriendly to arrest me that I should get off scot free. As a matter of fact, I think he is a very clever man.’

  ‘Really?’ murmured Mrs Bradley. ‘That is what I am afraid of!’

  ‘Oh, dear! What a nuisance! Here comes Alastair,’ interrupted Carstairs.

  ‘Feeling much better,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly. ‘What hypocrites these parents are!’

  Alastair began to speak long before he reached them.

  ‘The Police Are Continuing Their Investigation,’ he said, with capital letters in his voice. ‘I understand that they are going to
take all our finger-prints.’

  ‘And what are they going to do with them?’ asked Carstairs, for the sake of saying something.

  ‘I don’t know in the least what they intend to do, either with the prints, or in any other way,’ Alastair replied, ‘but I am going to ask them to let me feel their bumps.’

  At which statement Mrs Bradley was so overcome by a fit of choking that she was obliged to return to the house for a glass of water, leaving the two men alone.

  As soon as she was out of hearing, Alastair Bing came very close to Carstairs, and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur that was barely audible.

  ‘I can’t stand that woman!’ he said. ‘Do you know what I think? I think she tried to kill poor Eleanor! I do really! After all, why not? She looks a tigress, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?’

  His bony forefinger found Carstairs’ short ribs and made him wince.

  ‘My dear Bing! My dear fellow!’ he exclaimed, edging a little farther away. ‘You must not say things like that to me. Mrs Bradley is not a very beautiful or even a very prepossessing looking woman, I admit, but one can scarcely call her a murderer on such slight grounds as those which her personal appearance affords. You really must not make these mischievous statements, you know. Of course, I would not dream of repeating them, but there are others who would, and you might easily damage the reputation of some perfectly innocent person.’

  ‘But somebody tried to kill Eleanor,’ Alastair Bing insisted, clutching Carstairs by the arm. ‘I know that. She was a perfectly normal, healthy girl. Why should she be accidentally drowned? Why should she attempt to commit suicide? They are silly ideas, both of them. Utterly silly. And there’s my book on The Roman Antiquities of Dorset. Who else could have looked up my references for me? Who would have done the typing? Who would have read the proofs and written to the publishers? It’s all very well to talk about fainting fits and attempted suicides, but I’ve seen the bruises on her neck. And I want the murderer found. Do you hear! I want him found!’

  He began to weep—a maudlin old man’s tears. Carstairs comforted him as best he could, and, when he recovered himself, suggested that they should return to the house.

  Here they found an interesting ceremony in progress. The inspector, assisted by a detective-sergeant, for the Chief Constable had not returned to Chaynings after lunch, was collecting fingerprints.

  ‘Don’t do the servants if you can avoid it,’ said Dorothy to the police officials as Alastair Bing and Carstairs came in. ‘If you do, poor Mr Bing won’t have a servant in the place next week.’

  The proceedings were being watched with a certain gloomy interest by the onlookers, who included Bertie Philipson and Mrs Bradley.

  ‘They’ve done everybody’s now except yours, Father, and Mr Carstairs,’ said Garde, looking attentively at the fingers of his own large brown hands, ‘so come along. Roll up. No charge is being made. All the fun of the fair!’

  The sergeant glanced at Carstairs’ hands and shook his head.

  ‘I shan’t need to take yours, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s a thumb-print that’s clearest on the poker, and I can tell at a glance that your thumbs, with the whirl almost in the centre, are nothing like the print I’ve taken, nothing at all. I understand, sir,’ he went on, turning to the inspector, ‘that there’s a young lady in bed upstairs whose prints we haven’t taken, and that it is just possible she was the last person to handle that poker. Could we——’

  Alastair Bing glowered, and led the way to Eleanor’s room. He tapped at the door, put his head round, and in a few words informed his daughter of what was about to happen.

  ‘Just take this card between the thumb and first finger, please, Miss Bing. No, the other hand. That’s it.’

  They bore the card away with them, and the inspector quietly closed the door.

  ‘Well!’ he said. ‘Comparisons unnecessary, Toddie, I guess?’

  The sergeant grinned.

  ‘You’re right, sir. Miss Eleanor Bing was certainly the last person to handle that poker, I fancy. Where’s the powder?’

  ‘Hum! Somehow, I rather expected as much, although how it affects the case, as the case stands, I can’t quite say,’ said the inspector later on. ‘You see, we’re out to find the murderer of Everard Mountjoy, not to discover why Miss Bing walks about the house at night bashing Guy Fawkes’ napper with a poker. Which reminds me,’ he went on, almost without a pause, ‘of a small duty I ought to perform. Go and dig out one of the ladies, and ask her to accompany me up to Miss Eleanor’s room again. I want to have a look in her medicine cupboard. Now, what excuse shall I make? Bit of bandage for a cut finger!’

  He drew out a small penknife. ‘Just as well to have a little real blood while we’re about it,’ he said, almost gaily. ‘Never tell a lie if it’s just as easy to be truthful.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mrs Bradley Explains

  ‘YOU’RE LOOKING VERY jovial this morning, sir, if I may say so,’ said Inspector Boring to Carstairs next day.

  Carstairs, out for an after-breakfast stroll in the grounds, had encountered the long-faced police officer and had stopped to chat with him.

  ‘Yes, I am going to a wedding in about an hour’s time,’ Carstairs somewhat surprisingly answered. ‘Mr Garde Bing and Miss Dorothy Clark are getting married by special licence in Wavertree.’

  ‘Are they, by Jove!’ said the inspector. He lowered his voice. ‘What’s the little idea, sir?”

  Carstairs smiled slightly and shook his head.

  ‘Oh, come now, sir,’ persisted Boring, almost pleadingly. ‘It is a bit out of the ordinary, you must admit. Yesterday we take their finger-prints, and today they go and get married. There must be something in it.’

  ‘I don’t see why, inspector.’

  Carstairs was frankly amused, and did not trouble to hide the fact.

  ‘What have the two things to do with one another?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah!’ said the inspector, in the tone of one who has a grievance. ‘What have all the facts in this case to do with one another? That’s what I’d like to know, hanged if I wouldn’t! Do you know what the Chief Constable said to me this morning? He asked me if I’d like to call in Scotland Yard.’

  Carstairs whistled softly.

  ‘Yes, that’s what he asked me. Of course, it may come to that yet, sir. Now, look here, Mr Carstairs, why don’t some of you ladies and gentlemen come across with what you know? It would help me considerably, and, what is more, you know, sir, it will save some of you the sight of a lot of trouble in the witness-box later on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Carstairs.

  ‘I mean I’m going to find out who killed Everard Mountjoy. You know the verdict of the coroner’s court! The coroner, guided by us, summed up so that it was utterly impossible to leave the word “murder” out of it. But I can’t prove murder, you see, sir, and yet I know, the same as you know, that murder was done.’

  ‘But I don’t know that murder was done. As I told you and Sir Joseph yesterday, I felt certain at first that Mountjoy was deliberately drowned, and I imagined I knew the identity of the murderer. But I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘You and Mrs Bradley seem to think alike upon most subjects,’ said the inspector, with a grin of distaste at the mention of Mrs Bradley’s name.

  ‘Upon most subjects we do not think alike,’ Carstairs observed, ‘but in this case——’ He left the sentence unfinished, and cocked an eye at the inspector, but the latter would not allow himself to be drawn.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ he said, with more good-humour than might have been expected from him, ‘you mean you won’t help me. Well, the police get used to that attitude. Still, I should have thought that a clever gentleman like yourself would have come across with any information he might have in his possession, if only to save awkwardness for himself later on. Especially’—Boring paused, as though carefully weighing his words—‘especially,’ he repeated, with slow and solemn emphasis, ‘as I have
removed your name from the list of suspected persons.’

  ‘That’s very good of you, I’m sure, inspector,’ said Carstairs with his quizzical smile. ‘To what, in particular, am I indebted for the honour?’

  ‘Oh, to yourself, chiefly, and, of course, on the strength of a tip from the Chief Constable. Said you were a member of his London clubs, or something.’

  Carstairs chuckled.

  ‘See what it is to have respectable haunts,’ he said. Then the smile left his face, and he went on very seriously:

  ‘Look here, inspector! I liked Everard Mountjoy, and I am as keen as you are to find her murderer. I’ll tell you who I thought it was, and I’ll tell you why I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘I’ll tell you both those things, sir,’ interpolated the inspector. ‘You thought it was Miss Bing, and you’ve changed your mind because you suspect what we know for a fact, namely, that it was no fainting fit, but a cold-blooded attempt at murder which caused Miss Bing to be found nearly drowned in the bath yesterday morning.’

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Carstairs. ‘That is what I thought. So there we are. And I’m forced to the conclusion that Mountjoy’s death was an accident.’

  ‘Come, come, Mr Carstairs!’ The inspector’s tone was reproachful. ‘You are not handing me that, surely! If Mountjoy was not murdered, why did someone try to kill Miss Bing? Somebody still thinks she was the murderer, if you don’t! And why, in the name of goodness, are those two people in such a hurry to get married? If they knew what I know,’ concluded the inspector darkly, ‘they’d think twice. Special licence, indeed! What for, Mr Carstairs? What for?’

  Carstairs shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

  ‘Impetuous youth,’ he said, with half humorous sadness. ‘Or perhaps they think Miss Clark stands in need of a husband’s protection.’

  ‘Protection?’ The inspector ruminated on this for a time, and then exclaimed:

  ‘Mr Carstairs, you’ve hit it! They are afraid of another attempt on her life! I was wrong about the Guy Fawkes! It was not a practical joke. We realized that when we heard that Miss Clark and Mrs Bradley had rigged it up between them, and that the young fellows, Bing and what’s-his-name?—Philipson—had had no hand in it. That means they can guess pretty nearly who the poker-fiend was, and have some idea he may try again. Half a minute before you say any more. I’ll just get that idea down clearly. There’s a lot in it.’