Speedy Death Read online

  Half-way across the lawn they encountered the butler, fluttering a telegram.

  ‘For me? Thank you, Mander.’ Carstairs took the orange envelope and tore it open.

  ‘No answer,’ he said.

  The perfect servant departed, while Carstairs, watched by the young man and the reptilian woman, re-read the flimsy form.

  ‘Good! My people have found someone to take over my work for the time being,’ he said. ‘I must go and tell Bing.’

  Left to themselves, Mrs Bradley and Bertie Philipson strolled the whole length of the splendid Chaynings lawn in silence. As they turned to retrace their steps, Mrs Bradley said:

  ‘Have you ever had any desire to commit murder? Don’t answer unless you like, of course.’

  Bertie laughed.

  ‘As a kid,’ he replied, ‘I loathed my father. Funny, because he was never really unkind or harsh, you know. In fact, when I grew up a bit, I discovered what a very decent old bird he was, and we became rather pally, especially after my mother died.’

  Mrs Bradley nodded her head slowly two or three times.

  ‘Of course, somebody in this house did it,’ she observed sadly. ‘You realize that fact, don’t you?’

  Bertie stopped and stared at her.

  ‘You don’t mean to say that you really believe all that tosh Carstairs has been talking, do you?’ he exclaimed.

  Mrs Bradley grimaced.

  ‘I do believe it,’ she affirmed, ‘and it was not tosh, young man. And I should advise you to think carefully where you were and what you were doing between seven and seven-thirty last night. And, if possible, get hold of someone who can support your alibi. We are all in deadly danger of getting ourselves hanged for last night’s work!’

  ‘But, look here,’ said Bertie, ‘you are not suggesting that I murdered the poor devil, are you?’

  ‘By no means,’ Mrs Bradley hastened to assure him. ‘But, still, you know, stranger things than that have been true. And you have homicidal tendencies. So have they all—or nearly all. I should except Mr Carstairs. He has none, so far as I am able to judge.’

  ‘Here, I say!’ exclaimed Bertie, in mingled amusement and disgust. ‘Whom are you accusing of being the murderer?’

  ‘I accuse no one,’ Mrs Bradley replied coolly. ‘I know what I know, and I deduce what I deduce. But accusation—that is not my business. I am a psychologist, not a policewoman. Some are killers, and some are not. But you, young man——’

  She paused, and Bertie broke into happy laughter.

  Mrs Bradley shook her head at him like a playful alligator.

  ‘All very well to be amused,’ she said. ‘But you wait and see! Just you wait and see!’

  ‘No, but speaking seriously,’ protested Bertie, ‘I am not a scrap amused, I can assure you. Now, honestly, do you, as a responsible woman, tell me, as a responsible man, that Mr Carstairs is sane, and is not going about on this beautiful summer morning with a complete buzzing bee in his bonnet? Do you tell me, and expect me to believe, that one of these quite ordinary, well-bred, decent, civilized people committed a beastly and unreasonable and unnecessary and illogical crime last night? It isn’t within the bounds of possibility, and I simply cannot believe it.’

  ‘You must,’ replied Mrs Bradley sharply. ‘You must believe it. You must get it well into your head. You must visualize it and realize it. And then’—she paused dramatically and wagged a yellow finger in his face—‘and then you had better prepare for yourself a sound, fool-proof, water-tight, gilt-edged alibi, against the time, young man, when the county police take over the nice conduct of this mysterious affair. For Mr Carstairs won’t rest until he gets a noose around somebody’s neck. You make up your mind about that!’

  Bertie gazed at the old lady in simple wonderment.

  ‘Well, I’m blessed! Anyone might imagine you thought I did it!’ he ejaculated at last. ‘You don’t think that, surely, Mrs Bradley, do you?’

  He blinked at her many times in rapid succession.

  ‘I am not concerned a bit with whether you did it or did not do it,’ replied she succinctly. ‘What I am concerned about is that you do not get hanged for it, young man. Somebody will be hanged, you see. Oh, yes. And it won’t be me,’ she concluded, with her dreadful chuckle.

  Bertie opened his mouth wide to say something, thought a moment, and then closed it.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mrs Bradley sympathetically. ‘Do say it.’

  ‘No,’ replied Bertie. ‘It might be used in evidence against me. I don’t trust you, you see.’

  Mrs Bradley screamed with delighted laughter.

  Chapter Three

  The Missing Clue

  MRS BRADLEY AND Bertie Philipson were not the only people who discussed the point of view held by Carstairs. It was true that he had not taken any member of the family into his confidence, but his remarks of the previous evening, coupled with a lively sense of curiosity, caused young Bing to seek out his father and blurt out certain grave suspicions and surmises which he had formed in his own mind.

  ‘You see, Father,’ the young man observed, ‘it isn’t as though anyone would leave the bathroom unlocked, is it? I mean, especially a woman who had hoodwinked us all for years with her pretence of being a man.’

  ‘I do not, and I shall not,’ Alastair Bing interrupted, his eyebrows shooting up to an alarming height on his forehead, ‘believe that the unfortunate female whose body lies in an upper chamber of this ill-starred house could possibly have been my old friend Everard Mountjoy. No, it cannot be so. For reasons of his own, which may or may not appear in due course, my friend has seen fit to disappear from my house. However, when, if at all, he thinks fit to return to me, he will find his place prepared, his room ready to receive him. More,’ concluded Alastair magnificently, ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘But look here, Dad——’ his son cried out.

  Alastair raised his hand.

  ‘No more, I beg you!’

  ‘But, Father, Mr Carstairs as good as said that the woman had been—well, that there was some sort of funny business.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said Alastair coldly—‘I must insist that I cannot undertake to translate your idiom into reasonable English. What am I to understand by “funny business”?’

  ‘She was—well, there’s been foul play,’ shouted Garde, and added, under his breath, ‘Damned old fool!’

  ‘I take it very ill that Carstairs should suggest that such a thing could occur in my house,’ said Alastair grandly. ‘Ask him to be so good as to give me a few moments in the library. And, if this disquieting rumour has spread, be kind enough to reassure the ladies, and tell them that I say it is nonsense.’

  Garde departed, and encountered Carstairs on his way from the garden to find Alastair.

  ‘Apropos of what I said this morning, Bing,’ began Carstairs crisply, upon entering the library, ‘I have received a wire from my people to the effect that they can carry on without me for a little while, and so, with your permission, I propose to get to the bottom of this mystery about Mountjoy’s death.’

  Alastair, having gazed all round the large room in a conspiratorial manner, tiptoed to the door and closed it.

  ‘I was compelled to speak rather abruptly on the matter to my son just now,’ he confessed. ‘It will never do for all kinds of wild rumours to spread. After all, there are the servants and the tradespeople to consider. But, I must confess, your remarks this morning impressed me more than I cared to admit to Garde, and I feel that we should take steps, decided steps, to prove at any rate, whether the dead body is that of Everard Mountjoy. It is a most incomprehensible thing to me, most incomprehensible, that a woman could have masqueraded so long without being detected, and that is why I have grave doubts as to the identity of the deceased person.’

  ‘There can be no doubt, I am sorry to say,’ said Carstairs. ‘Did not Mountjoy lose two fingers on the left hand after an accident with a gun on one of his hunting trips?’

  ‘Yes, he did. I have
observed the deformity more than once.’

  ‘I noticed the left hand of the corpse when we carried it into the bedroom,’ said Carstairs simply. ‘The two fingers are missing.’

  Alastair Bing groaned.

  ‘There will be an inquest, of course,’ he said. ‘And now, I suppose, there will be all sorts of scandalous tales bandied about. Eleanor will be most upset. We have always been so quiet here——’

  ‘I don’t see that there need be any scandal,’ said Carstairs. ‘There is no need for anybody to know that the dead woman ever pretended to be a man. None of the village people know anything about her, do they? No, what concerns me is the fact that she was murdered.’

  ‘You have no proof! You have no right to make such a statement!’ cried Alastair. ‘I cannot imagine what cause you have for saying such a terrible thing. Don’t you see—can you not realize that you are virtually accusing someone in this house of having done to death a fellow-creature? It is monstrous to think such a thing, let alone say it. Besides, where is your evidence?’

  ‘If I had any evidence that I could put to the proof, Bing, we should be compelled to call in the police,’ replied Carstairs. ‘As to the suggestion that the murderer is a person residing here, well, I cannot see that it is necessarily the truth.’

  ‘But I say that if—mind, I am not convinced that the murder was committed—but, if so, then the criminal is someone living in this house, and knowing the ways of this house. Look at the time of day, for instance. My dinner-hour is an unusually early one, and yet the criminal, if criminal there was, carried out his unholy act at a time when everybody else was dressing for dinner. That is to say, at a time when everybody, and yet, in a sense, when nobody can fully account for himself or herself. You understand me?’

  ‘Upon my word, Bing,’ said Carstairs, ‘you are quite right. Nobody can have a hole-proof alibi, and yet everybody has only to assert that he was dressing for dinner and no one can contradict him. This is going to be extremely awkward.’

  ‘Again,’ pursued Alastair, checking off the points on his fingers, ‘look what knowledge of the house is shown. The bathroom the deceased was using at the time—the fact that the window was open at the top——’

  ‘The fact,’ cried Carstairs, almost dancing with excitement, ‘that the intruder knew that poor Mountjoy would not even cry out at the sight of him as he clambered in through the window. That point puzzles me horribly. I mean, people don’t ordinarily visit other people in the bathroom, do they? And it is quite certain that Mountjoy did not cry out, for I made tests this morning, and discovered that even with both taps running I could be heard when I shouted for help. So the murderer could not have been a stranger to Mountjoy. On the contrary——’ He paused, as a new and curious thought struck him.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Alastair Bing. ‘Although, I must confess,’ he added hastily, ‘that I think your hypothesis utterly untenable. Mountjoy could not have been murdered. For one thing, how did the murderer get into the bathroom? You are not going to suggest that Mountjoy kindly left the door unlocked to save the killer trouble, are you? And as for the window being open at the top, it may have been, but the murderer did not get in that way.’

  ‘Why didn’t he?’ asked Carstairs keenly.

  ‘Because it is a physical impossibility,’ replied Alastair. ‘You seem to forget that the bathroom window is at least forty feet above ground-level, and there is no foothold for climbing. There’s not even a porch or an outhouse on that wall. Come outside, and I will show you what I mean.’

  ‘No, there, is no porch or outhouse, I know, but there is a balcony,’ replied Carstairs. ‘I have been looking at it from below, and also out of the bathroom window, and I am certain that a person possessed of a clear head and average muscular development would find no difficulty in climbing from the iron railing of the small balcony outside the bedroom which is occupied at present by Miss Clark to the window of the bathroom where the crime was committed. If the window was open at the top to let the steam out, the murderer could have opened it at the bottom, for it is just an ordinary type of sash window, and slides up and down extremely readily, I noticed. Once the stepping from the balcony was accomplished and the bottom of the window pushed up, it would be simplicity itself to climb in over the sill.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’ snorted Alastair Bing, ‘it is too hideously dangerous an undertaking for words. No sane person would dream of attempting such a feat.’

  ‘No sane person——’ Carstairs blinked, as a new thought occurred to him. He shrugged his shoulders, and went on more briskly:

  ‘Look here! We can soon settle whether it is a possible or an impossible feat. You go up to the bathroom and look out of the window, and I’ll get someone to attempt the climb.’

  ‘I won’t have anybody take unnecessary risks,’ retorted Alastair, with spirit.

  ‘Very well. I’ll do it myself!’ And Carstairs made his way to the door and passed out. Alastair Bing, pulling irritably at his bristling moustache, followed him.

  ‘The bathroom! Let us have another look at the bathroom!’ he cried.

  It was like all other bathrooms—bare, tiled, sunny, and austere.

  ‘The window was open like this,’ said Carstairs, pushing the top of it down some four inches.

  ‘As much as that? I don’t remember noticing it myself.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite as much. And the bottom was right up like this.’

  He pushed it up so that an aperture large enough for a well-grown man to obtain admission from without was disclosed.

  ‘Yes, I remember that,’ Alastair assented. ‘I thought at the time it was odd that anyone should be having a bath with the window wide open like that. One could be seen from the garden and the stables as soon as one stood up, I should imagine.’

  ‘Quite,’ Carstairs agreed. ‘So the murderer must have opened the window, I should say; the victim would not have done so.’

  ‘Of course, the great objection to your theory of murder is that no marks of violence or evidence of poison have been discovered on or in the body,’ Alastair pointed out.

  ‘Of course they have not!’ Carstairs stared in amazement. ‘Mountjoy was drowned!’

  ‘Drowned! But, my dear fellow, people don’t allow themselves to be drowned as easily as all that.’

  ‘Don’t they? Have you ever heard of the “Brides in the Bath” case?’

  ‘I—yes, I suppose so. Yes, of course I have. A dreadful scoundrel, that man.’

  ‘Yes. Look here, Bing, take off your coat and get into the bath. It is quite dry, so you need not be afraid of spoiling your suit. Just a moment, though. One question. Which of us two do you take to be the stronger man?’

  ‘Myself, undoubtedly,’ replied Alastair, without hesitation. ‘I am both taller and heavier than you are.’

  ‘And you do your exercises regularly, I’ve no doubt, whilst I meander around after my flora and fauna. Well, that only lends more colour to my argument. Come, get in. This is not a practical joke. It is a serious demonstration.’

  Unwillingly Alastair Bing divested himself of his jacket and boots, and, feeling extremely foolish, stepped into the bath.

  ‘Sit down,’ commanded Carstairs vigorously.

  Protesting against a waste of time, but interested in spite of himself, Alastair obeyed.

  ‘I sit here on the edge of the bath. I am talking to you on a subject very near to my heart. It is a subject which vitally concerns both of us, so much so that I have even climbed through the window in order to interview you in your bathroom, where, presumably, we shall not be disturbed. You may or may not have known that I was coming, but, at any rate, you are not altogether surprised to see me, or, if you are, you do not betray it by calling out. Picture to yourself, my dear Alastair, the scene.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Alastair irascibly. ‘Here, I am tired of this foolery. I’m going to——’

  ‘Mind your head!’ cried Carstairs.

  Bing looked swiftly round, an
d at the same instant Carstairs seized his ankles and jerked his feet sharply upwards. Taken at such disadvantage, Alastair clutched wildly at the sides of the bath, but his fingers slipped on the glazed surface of the porcelain, and his body slid ignominiously along the bottom of the bath until his head struck the end. Carstairs released his feet, sprang towards his head, and, in spite of his frenzied struggles, held it down on to the bottom of the bath.

  Then he released his hold, dusted the knees of his trousers, allowed his highly incensed host to climb out of the bath and rub a severely bumped head, and then observed nonchalantly:

  ‘Well, that is how the brides are supposed to have been drowned in the bath. What do you think of the method? Fairly simple, I think. Do say that you are convinced.’

  Alastair, still ruffled, allowed himself to be assisted into his coat.

  ‘Mere horseplay,’ he growled.

  ‘Well, I didn’t intend it as such, and I’m sorry I hadn’t realized you would bump your head. But, as a demonstration of how Mountjoy probably met her death, I think it was rather successful. Now, scientifically speaking, don’t you agree?’

  ‘If you appeal to me as a fellow scientist,’ Alastair conceded, ‘I see your point. Your theory is that the murderer climbed through there, drowned Everard Mountjoy, and, unlocking the door, walked out. Of course, if you are right, that lends still more colour to my idea that it must have been someone who knew the house, doesn’t it? In fact’—he looked at Carstairs straight in the eye—‘it might have been any one of us—unless a servant did it.’

  Carstairs made no reply, and Alastair walked to the window and looked out.

  ‘Hum! That bedroom balcony does come pretty close here,’ he remarked; ‘I had forgotten it was built out so far. A man wouldn’t need to be very active to step over that railing on to that bit of the water-spout that’s flattened and decorated, and so on to this sill. It would be child’s play. Scarcely any danger. And the window was open at the top. And he put his arm over and pulled up the bottom half and climbed in on to——’ He paused dramatically. ‘The bathroom window is a bit high up in the wall, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What did he put his foot on, I wonder, to assist him down? You see, if he had dropped and chanced it, he’d have shaken the floor like an earthquake, and somebody would certainly have come very hastily along to find out the cause of the disturbance. So where is——’