Читать книгу The Murder Germ - A. O. Pollard - Страница 9

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There came the sound of an opening door, the rush of hurrying feet.

“What is it, Hilary?” asked Dr. Manners sharply. “What’s the matter?”

Conscious that Mrs. Westacott was close behind him, Tony instinctively closed the pantry door. He felt that he was trembling violently, but his brain seemed to be working with the precision of a machine.

“She’s had a bad shock,” he answered the doctor’s question. “Roberts is dead. Take her to her room, Mrs. Westacott, and see what you can do for her.”

“Dead?” queried Beney, crowding forward. “Roberts?”

“He’s been murdered,” revealed Tony in a low voice. “There’s nothing you can do for him; Miss Manners is the first consideration at the moment.”

Beney took the hint and, throwing his arm round Hilary, helped the stricken girl towards the staircase.

Edith Westacott stood staring at the pantry door. Under her make-up her face was chalk-white and she repeatedly moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Tony shook her roughly by the arm.

“Pull yourself together and go with them,” he ordered sharply. “Get her some brandy or something. And don’t ask her any damn’ silly questions,” he added brusquely.

“Did you say he had been murdered?” asked Manners when they were alone. “Are you sure it isn’t just a fit?”

His voice was shocked, but Tony was glad to see he was quite self-possessed.

“You had better have a look,” declared Tony, and threw open the door.

Manners viewed the gruesome sight with professional calm. Bending down, he closely examined the battered skull.

“I should say that death was instantaneous,” he pronounced. “Poor Roberts. I wonder who could have done it.” His gaze centred on the tumbler with its grisly contents. “If that thing could only speak!”

An electric bell purred softly on the wall; the indicator designated the front door.

“I’ll go; you stay here. If any of the other servants show up, head them off.”

“Shall I ring up the police?”

Tony indicated a telephone on the table.

“Yes, please do; but not from here. You had better use the instrument in the dining-room.”

The front door bell rang again and he hurried to answer it. Tony returned to the dining-room and called Scotland Yard.

As he gave his message he could hear voices talking in the hall. Surely that was Westacott? He had managed to return, then.

Westacott and Manners came into the room as he was replacing the receiver and crossed to the sideboard. Manners took a decanter of whisky from a cupboard.

“Here you are, help yourself. You look all in, man.”

Tony noticed that Westacott’s hand was shaking like a leaf. His nerves must be in the hell of a state.

Westacott poured out a generous measure of spirit and drank it at a gulp.

“I needed that,” he declared fervently. “I’m tired, I suppose, and your news fairly bowled me over. Did I understand you to say the tongue has been cut out, Manners? Like the Herbert Lane case?”

“It’s exactly the same, as far as I can see. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“It is, indeed; if murder were a disease, I would say there was an epidemic of it.”

“Both these murders are modelled on the le Maitre case,” pointed out Tony. “He bashed his victim on the head and cut out her tongue.”

Westacott poured himself another whisky.

“It must be due to a mania, don’t you agree, Manners? I swear that no normal person could bring himself to do such a thing.”

“Unless it’s some sort of a blind to put the police off the scent. Hallo, here they are,” he cried as a car drew up at the house. “That’s quick and no mistake.”

“They receive their orders by wireless fitted in the cars,” explained Tony, following the others into the hall.

The two men who had arrived so promptly were members of the mobile police patrol, and their orders were to see that nothing was disturbed pending the arrival of the Yard murder experts.

One of them was a singularly intelligent fellow, and the moment he heard about the tongue-cutting episode he rang through to headquarters.

As a result of his report Kitch Dunthorne was fetched from his home. He reached the Manners residence within an hour of the discovery of the crime and at once took charge of the proceedings.

There was every indication that the murder was perpetrated by an intruder to the house. A window had been found open leading from the garden, and traces of earth-stained footmarks were found both outside and inside the butler’s pantry.

With the aid of a powerful torch a search was made of the garden, but the footpaths were concreted. And beyond establishing that it was possible to effect an entry by climbing the end boundary wall from a passage at the back, nothing was discovered.

Whilst photographers and finger-print experts carried on with their duties, Kitch conducted an inquiry amongst those present in the house during the evening.

The servants were speedily eliminated. The cook and the two maids were in bed and asleep when Hilary made her tragic discovery, and were not aroused until after Dunthorne had arrived at the house.

Hilary, Edith Westacott, and Tony were dealt with equally quickly. All three were able to corroborate one another’s statements that they were in the drawing-room together from the time when Roberts conducted Tony from the dining-room to the moment when Hilary, receiving no response when she pressed the bell, went to find out why the butler had not answered.

“Very well, then, you ladies may retire,” conceded Kitch when he had heard all they had to say. “I’ll let you know if I want you again.”

Except for confirmation of details he was not particularly interested in the movements of the women-folk. In his opinion, mad or sane, no woman, with the possible exception of a few who earned their living as manual workers, could have inflicted the head injuries which caused the butler’s death.

The sheer brutality with which the blows must have been delivered, the mutilation of the tongue, and the abandonment of the bloody claw-hammer made it clear to his experienced mind that the killing was the work of a homicidal lunatic.

Fully conscious though he was that the outstanding features of the case were almost identical with those which attended the death of Isaacs, and, several years earlier, of Mrs. le Maitre, he paid scant attention to such a singular coincidence at this stage. He was a practical individual, trained to consider facts and to disregard supposition. And since Sidney le Maitre was dead and Herbert Lane locked up, it was quite out of the question that the three crimes could have any material connection.

The uniformity of detail which linked the three cases together was capable of explanation as conscious or subconscious imitation. Copying the example set by other people is a primitive instinct of the human mind, and in the case of brains warped by madness, the trait is frequently highly developed. In the specific instance he was investigating it was quite probable that the murderer, having read the Press report of Isaacs’ end in the morning papers, had been influenced to copy the lurid particulars in his own crime.

Dunthorne did not for one moment imagine that the killer would be found amongst the members of the Manners household or guests. But with the thoroughness of police routine, which gains results more by a process of patient elimination than by spectacular deduction, he meant to leave no avenue unexplored, however improbable.

“Now, sir”—he turned to Dr. Manners when the door had closed behind Hilary and Mrs. Westacott—“from what we have been told I understand that you and Mr. Beney remained in the dining-room. Were you both still there when Miss Manners screamed?”

“No, we had parted company for some time.”

“Where were you?”

“I was in my study.”

“And you, Mr. Beney?”

“I was still in the dining-room.”

Tony listened to their replies with considerable interest. From the way they were talking when he left them he had concluded that their discussion had lasted the whole time he was in the drawing-room. What, he wondered, had terminated it so quickly?

Once again the remembrance of that quarrel at Rainhurst entered his mind. Had it broken out once more when they were alone, causing Dr. Manners to leave his guest to his own devices? If they had parted on a friendly basis it was rather extraordinary that one, if not both of them, had not joined the party in the drawing-room.

“And you, neither of you heard anything—unusual, shall we say?”

Dr. Manners shook his head.

“Absolutely nothing. I admit that my study is at the back of the house, but the curtains were drawn; and in any case I had something else to occupy my mind. I suppose I may as well tell you that Mr. Beney and I had been engaged in an argument concerning a particular form of mosquito which is found in the swamps of Burma. I will spare you the details, unless you think they are essential. But as we were getting nowhere I went in search of a book on insect life and habits that would support my case. I sat down to look up the physical formation of the particular insect we were discussing, and I suppose I became engrossed in my subject. If you require any confirmation of what I’ve just told you, you’ll find the book lying open on my desk.”

Beney smiled broadly.

“I confess I wondered why you didn’t return,” he remarked dryly in his clipped Anglo-Indian speech. “But I too was well occupied in your absence. If you examine the table-cloth in the dining-room, Inspector, you will discover the pencilled workings of a mathematical formula with which I was amusing myself to relieve the tedium of waiting.”

Tony felt a bit of a fool. He had been jumping to conclusions about the two partners’ absence from the drawing-room, when it was capable of a simple and straightforward explanation. Now he came to think of it, Beney might have been tempted to keep away from the drawing-room as long as Edith Westacott was there; he had shown plainly at dinner that he did not like her.

“Have you any more questions?” asked Dr. Manners.

Dunthorne shook his head.

“No, sir, thank you. What you have told me is quite sufficient, I think. This is purely a matter of routine, you understand.” He smiled faintly. “You gentlemen are not suspected of being accomplices in any way, but we frequently get a tip from a chance remark that is of inestimable value in our investigations.” He turned to Dr. Westacott. “Now you, sir. I understand you left the house immediately after dinner and returned a few minutes after the crime was discovered. I should like to know why you came back.”

“I came back to fetch my wife.”

The answer was a perfectly natural one. But somehow, to Tony, it did not ring quite true. There was no doubt in his mind that Dr. and Mrs. Westacott barely tolerated each other; their attitude at the dinner-table had made that plain enough. Why then did the doctor now assume the role of a devoted spouse?

An ugly thought entered his mind. Westacott had twice shown animosity in the dining-room towards the dead butler. Could it be possible ...?

Tony suppressed the thought instantly. There was a vast deal of difference between the doctor’s slight testiness, attributed to nervous strain, and the hate to incite such a brutal murder. The doctor’s reply was a perfectly normal one. Why should he reveal his marital differences to a police officer?

“I am jolly glad I’m not a detective,” decided Tony grimly. “I should be reading motives and criminal intentions into the most innocent actions and remarks.”

Dunthorne appeared to have accepted the reply at its face value.

“Purely as a matter of form, sir, may I have a list of the calls you made whilst you were away? Just the names and addresses of your patients and the approximate duration of each visit will do.”

Westacott felt in his pocket and produced a small note-book.

“Certainly, Inspector. There are about half a dozen of them. Here is my case-book, if you care to look at it.”

Tony was puzzled. Hang it, this second reply of the doctor’s did not seem genuine either. He was altogether too ready to comply with the detective’s requests. And his manner was altogether too blatantly unconcerned.

Why, after seeming so nervous and upset when he first heard the news, was he so calm and self-assured now? What had brought about the change of front? The whisky perhaps?

Yes, it must have been the whisky. He had taken a couple of stiff ones straight away, one after the other, and they had given him Dutch courage.

“I see this last one is an address in Paddington. What time did you leave there?”

Tony leaned tensely forward as Westacott hesitated. Was he about to clear himself or increase the doubt that had crept back into Tony’s mind. Even at this time of night he could not drive from Paddington in under ten minutes.

“About ten forty-five,” stated the doctor slowly, and Tony relaxed.

It was within two or three minutes of ten forty-five that Hilary had gone in search of Roberts. Since Westacott had an alibi for that time—and no doubt his statement would bear a close investigation—it rubbed him out of the picture.

“What’s the matter with your wrist, Doctor?” asked Dunthorne sharply. “Have you strained it or something?”

Westacott looked startled.

“Strained it? Oh no.” He held out his hand and wriggled his fingers. “No, I haven’t strained it. As a matter of fact, being in the middle of a diphtheria epidemic, I gave myself a dose of anti-toxin this afternoon as a precautionary measure, and it has brought on a slight nettle-rash.”

He pulled up his sleeve to disclose his forearm. Discolouring the white skin was an angry scarlet patch.