[Mrs Bradley 41] - Three Quick and Five Dead Page 8

  ‘Then it seems to me that we are faced with a copycat murder.’

  ‘A theory which we have already rejected.’

  The C.I.D. Inspector from Scotland Yard did not reject it, however, and news came from Phillips that Otto Schumann was, in the classic phrase, assisting the police in their enquiries into the death of Maria Machrado.

  ‘Their view,’ said Phillips, ‘is that Schumann copied the methods of his sister’s murderer, and there’s no doubt he can’t produce any sort of alibi for the time when Muchrado was killed. He says that after they had the row about money, and had parted, he went to London on the spree. He doesn’t seem to remember much of what he did up there and, as he was under the influence most of the time, he can’t give himself much help.’

  ‘What is the evidence against him?’

  ‘That he and Machrado had had this row – he admits it, and, of course, her landlady’s description of it has lost nothing in the telling – and that Maria was pregnant. They don’t believe him when he says she didn’t expect him to marry her, and, naturally, any other boy-friends she may have had are not in a hurry to come forward for fear of being implicated. He’s not yet remanded in custody, but, although they are continuing investigations, I’m certain the Yard believe they’ve got the right man.’

  ‘What is their attitude towards the murder of Karen Schumann, then?’

  ‘They regard that as my pigeon. They were called in to investigate the death of Machrado, and, as they’ve convinced themselves that the murders are not connected, that’s that, in their view. I can’t say I blame them, although I’m certain they’re mistaken. Of course, they’ve unearthed a lot of information which I hadn’t got hold of, including evidence that Schumann could be violent and had slugged a couple of Dutch sailors ashore in a pub and half-killed a Lascar seaman on his own ship. Added to that, his mother has admitted that she was physically afraid of him in some of his moods, and that hasn’t done his case much good, as you may imagine.’

  ‘But you yourself retain an open mind?’

  ‘Not altogether an open mind, ma’am. I still think the same man killed both girls, and as that man can’t have been Schumann, well, that’s where I stand, and, following my hunch, I’m still tailing James.’

  Laura telephoned her husband.

  ‘Oh, there’s method in our madness,’ Gavin replied. ‘The case can’t possibly come to trial for several weeks. Meanwhile, if Phillips is right – and, like most Hampshiremen, although he may be slow, he is apt to be very sure – our joker will try again, and, when he does, I should think we’ll get him.’

  ‘Of course, Otto Schumann’s such a liar.’

  ‘Yes, just the type – pathological, as Dame B. points out – to be the sort of person who commits a string of murders, and he’s known to be violent, of course. The magistrates have now remanded him in custody, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll be brought to trial. They’ll still go on looking. Phillips is positive Otto is not our man, and he’s quite a hard-headed old cuss and not a bad psychologist, in his way. Incidentally, you know we’ve been certain all the time that Schumann couldn’t have killed his sister? Well, but for an odd coincidence, he could have done. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.’

  But it was Phillips who came with the next bit of news. Scotland Yard’s case against Otto was stronger, and his own case against James was weaker, than he had thought. Not quite all of the first story with which Otto had amused himself by recounting to Dame Beatrice was untrue. The London C.I.D., with far greater resources than those vouchsafed to a police officer in the provinces, had unearthed some interesting facts about it.

  It had occurred to minds sharper, more suspicious and more astute than Phillips’ admittedly rather slow intelligence, that as Bilbao, Maria Machrado’s home town, was also a seaport of considerable importance, Otto’s ship might well have called there to pick up cargo. Not only did this prove to be the case, but it was also established that the uxorious Otto not only knew the girl, but that she had indeed come to England on his ship, although not with the uncle he had postulated. Further, a reluctant and tearful Mrs Schumann had been persuaded to admit that it was Otto who had sent the girl to her as soon as he had learned of his sister’s death.

  ‘And I am thinking at first,’ moaned Mrs Schumann, ‘that my wicked boy has had a change of heart and is sorry for his mother in her loneliness, and sends me this young girl to comfort me, so that I shall have somebody with me at weekends and for College vacations, as before.’

  ‘And when did you change your mind?’ asked the patient, gentle voice of Detective-Inspector Maisry of Scotland Yard.

  ‘When, of course, he takes pleasure of the girl, and takes her out in my car, and all the rest. And when I warn the girl against him she laughs in my face and asks me what I expect. She tells me she is pregnant by Otto on board the ship, and that he will have to marry her, although he says not, and that he would rather kill her than marry her.’

  These fell words being repeated to Otto by Maisry, he denied them, which made no difference whatever to Maisry’s conviction that Mrs Schumann had been telling the truth. Then Maisry investigated Otto’s statement that he had got drunk, been robbed, had slept in a hayloft and had foot-slogged it back to his ship. It proved to be an altogether highly-coloured account of what had actually happened.

  ‘It seems, ma’am,’ said Phillips, recounting to Dame Beatrice the story he had had from Maisry, ‘that after Miss Machrado had threatened him with a knife, and after she had run halfway down the street after him – he having taken the knife away and smacked her face – all this is vouched for by the landlady – he went on a drinking spree with some of his friends and then those who were sober enough got the drunks, including Otto, back to the lodging house where they were staying while they were ashore.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘He went back to his ship on the following day.’

  ‘What about his story that his mother brushed and pressed his clothes?’

  ‘Quite false. You were right when you called him a psychopath, ma’am. He’s a pathological liar. Seems incapable of telling a straight story. Must enlarge and embroider.’

  ‘Some of that might show a misplaced sense of humour, of course.’

  ‘The police don’t appreciate misplaced senses of humour, ma’am.’

  ‘Who does, except the humourist himself? But if, after he had recovered from the results of this drinking bout, he returned to his ship, what reason have you for suspecting him of killing Miss Machrado?’

  ‘I don’t suspect him, ma’am – although I well might, if there was the slightest chance that he could have strangled his sister – it’s Maisry who insisted on pulling him in. He went back to his ship, yes, but Maisry has unearthed one of the men-students at the College who alleges that Miss Machrado came to his digs and told him that her landlady had kicked her out, that she had nowhere to go, that she was pregnant by Schumann, and begged him to help her. Well, the poor young chap wasn’t prepared to do anything much, but he suggested that she should go to Schumann and threaten to report him to his captain if he did not marry her. This, the student asserts, she decided to do. She went to the ship in his company because she claimed, probably rightly, that he might be allowed on board, but that she would not. To sum up, the student’s story is that he persuaded Otto to come ashore and speak to the girl, and that the two of them strolled off together.’

  ‘And does Otto agree that this happened?’

  ‘Yes, so far. Then his famous inventive powers came into play again. He told Maisry that he persuaded the girl to throw herself on his mother’s mercy, and that he gave her a note to take to his mother, acknowledging that the coming child was his, and begging her to take the girl in because he proposed to marry her on his next leave.’

  ‘And Mrs Schumann?’

  ‘Denies that either the girl or her son’s note ever came anywhere near her.’

  ‘So Detective-Inspector Maisry has
plumped for Otto, but you yourself are still on the trail of Edward James?’

  ‘I’m not happy about Schumann, ma’am. I still think both murders were committed by James, or, if not by him, at least by the same hand.’

  ‘If not by him? You are wavering in your opinion that he is our murderer?’

  ‘Not altogether. The only thing is that James really did spend his Christmas holiday in London, and went every day it was open to the London Library. That I proved, but it doesn’t take into account how he spent his evenings. He gave me the address of the boarding-house where he stayed, but I couldn’t get much help there. James was not often in of an evening, and claimed that he did a round of theatres and cinemas. I asked him to show me the theatre programmes as a bit of a check, but he says he never kept them – always left them behind at the theatre. He could certainly give me a pretty good idea of what the plays and films were about, but, of course, an educated man like him could have memorised all the main points from newspaper reports or from what other people had told him.’

  ‘Were you able to convince yourself that Mr James and Miss Machrado had met at least once at Mrs Schumann’s cottage?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he doesn’t deny that, but says it was only once, although Mrs Schumann thinks it may have been twice.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gavin, meeting Dame Beatrice at her house in Kensington, ‘I’ve an open mind about who killed Karen Schumann, but I don’t think there’s much room for doubt about who killed Maria Machrado.’

  ‘When you spoke to Laura over the telephone you made the intriguing suggestion that, but for an odd coincidence, Otto would have been in a position to kill his sister. To what circumstances did you refer?’

  ‘That he was almost sacked for setting about and half-killing a Lascar seaman. The shipping company took a dim view and threatened to sack him there and then, but his skipper stood by him and claimed that the man was insufferably lazy and had also given lip and refused to obey orders, so, reluctantly, (the captain told me), the directors gave way, issued a stern warning to Otto that the sort of conduct which obtained in a whaler in the sixties of last century would certainly not be tolerated in any ship of theirs, and allowed him to make the next voyage. As it chanced, it was during the next voyage that his sister was murdered, and, of course, he had a fool-proof motive for killing her – only he didn’t.’

  ‘You mean the money she refused to give him, don’t you? But he still would not have obtained possession of it. She left everything to her mother.’

  ‘Who may possibly have killed Maria Machrado, but who cannot, surely, be suspected of having killed her own daughter. I can’t think why the idea ever crossed our minds, can you?’

  Dame Beatrice wagged her head, but made no reply.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Done to Death by …

  ‘Her lips were red, her eyes were brown,

  Mark well what I do say!

  Her lips were red, her eyes were brown,

  And her hair was black and it hung right down …

  I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.’

  * * *

  (1)

  Dame Beatrice briefed her son, Sir Ferdinand Lestrange, Q.C., for the defence in case Otto should be brought to trial. He did not expect to obtain an acquittal, he told his mother. He did not think there was the slightest chance of one, for the prosecution had a strong case. However, he thought he might be able to confuse the issue sufficiently to cause the jury to disagree, and so get the trial – if it came to that – referred to the next sessions.

  ‘You never know, with juries,’ he said. ‘Ten to one they couldn’t care less if a man with a foreign name murders a girl with a foreign name. On the other hand, the English always fall over backwards to protect other nationals, so we must wait and see what happens.’

  ‘You yourself believe that Otto Schumann is guilty, then?’ Dame Beatrice asked.

  Ferdinand smiled.

  ‘I am a cautious man, as you know,’ he replied, ‘but if I were prosecuting I would back myself to secure a conviction. The evidence is all there. A record of violence, although, I admit, he has never been gaoled for it, (and, of course, the prosecution couldn’t use it), a whirlwind love affair (if you call it that) with this nymph, a quarrel about money and a pregnancy. What more could you ask for?’

  ‘And, of course, her Tutor at the College was forthright on the subject of Machrado’s dilettante attitude towards attendance at lectures, and this, I thought, you might be able to use to great advantage,’ said Laura.

  ‘Not altogether with the Tutor’s approval, I imagine. She will not intend to indicate what I hope to persuade the jury that she does indicate – namely, that the girl was a thoroughly bad lot and cut lectures wholesale so that she could pick up men. As for Schumann’s acts of violence, well, if I had been prosecuting I should make sure the jury “heard about them”, if you know what I mean. After all, objections may be sustained, but, all the same, the objectionable statement has been made, and, however much the jury may be told to disregard it, in actual fact it’s very difficult for them to put it out of their minds. However, I’m not prosecuting.’

  Gavin laughed.

  ‘How to win your cases without actually cheating!’ he said. ‘I wish you luck, but my chaps are pretty thorough and are convinced they’ve got the man who killed Maria Machrado.’

  ‘Phillips still doesn’t think so,’ said Laura.

  (2)

  Edward James set down an armful of exercise books on the Common Room window-ledge, walked across the room and began to tidy his locker. He had never been a popular member of the staff at the Old Bridge Comprehensive School, and after some awkwardly-expressed condolences on the death of his fiancée the others had left him more solitary than ever. It was not with any intention of being unkind or heartless that this attitude was maintained, but simply that the murder of one of their number had shocked them very deeply and had set apart the person most nearly affected by it.

  James was not, and never had been, actively disliked, but he was an enigma, a self-centred, silent, pre-occupied man intent only upon his own advancement. It was known that almost all his free time was spent upon study and research for his doctorate, but, as he had no close friends, nobody knew what progress he made or how high his hopes were of success.

  He was a capable teacher in the sense that boys and girls did the work he set and gave him their attention in class partly because his exposition was clear and sound and his preparation of his lessons was thorough, and partly because, in their hearts, they were rather in awe of the solitary man, but his nickname was Sunny Jim which, to those versed in the ironic overtones of the young, was comment enough on what they thought of him. He took part in no out-of-school activities on the plea of having no time to spare for these, but his real reason was that he did not care for young people, had no sympathy with their adolescent strivings and ideals, and merely regarded them as being useful to him since, without them, he would have been obliged to find some other way of earning a living. As it was, the short school day (since he saw no reason to add to it voluntarily) and the long school holidays suited his ambitious purpose and caused him to be contented with his lot, if not enthralled by it.

  He was not alone in the Common Room. With him were the Miss Tompkins and the Miss O’Reilly with whom his fiancée had shared a flat. Miss Tompkins had a free period; Miss O’Reilly was on visiting rounds to extort subscriptions from her colleagues for a wedding present for a member of staff who was getting married during the Easter holidays. Her mission (although, according to the time-table, she should have been in class) was excusable on two counts. One was that to ask for subscriptions in the Common Room during break or in the dinner-hour would be embarrassing if the giftee happened to be present, and the other was that subscriptions, even at the minimal half-a-crown a head, were undoubtedly unpopular, and a united body of opinion could, and probably would, veto altogether the proposed giving of a wedding-present or else whittle the subscrip
tion down to a heartbreaking bob a nob. In front of an eager, lynx-eyed, lip-reading class, however, the dunned were helpless and usually paid up without demur.

  ‘Well, I’ve seen everybody except you two and the Lord of Titipu,’ announced Miss O’Reilly, referring in this facetious way to her headmaster, who was somewhat of a martinet, ‘so half-a-crown each, please.’

  ‘I’d make it five bob if that little drip was leaving,’ said Miss Tompkins, ‘but, as it is, we shall have to put up with her until the first baby is well on the way, I suppose.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll tick you off on my list. Everybody has coughed up except Jane, who was taking P.E. and had left her purse in her locker, and Fanny, who, as usual, swore she hadn’t any change. Oh, thanks, Edward. What are you going to do for the holidays? Swot?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ replied James. ‘I shall be doing research, as usual.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Of course, yes. Where else?’

  ‘I thought you might be following in the steps of Saint Paul, or going to Rome or something. First-hand material, you know.’

  ‘Oh, no. It wouldn’t help me.’ He turned his back on her and continued to tidy his locker.

  (3)

  Laura read the letter twice before she laid it down. Observing that her employer was still involved with her own correspondence, she said nothing, but began upon a plate of gammon and eggs. At the toast and marmalade stage she noted that Dame Beatrice had put aside the last of her letters and was prepared for conversation.

  ‘Anything there for me to deal with?’ Laura enquired.

  ‘I think not. I shall have to stay here in the Kensington house for a week or two. Doctor Fairson has his son from New Zealand staying with them, and, although he doesn’t say so, I feel certain that he would be glad to give up the clinic for a bit and enjoy his son’s company, and Miss Gibson is too young and inexperienced to be left in full charge.’