Читать книгу Call Mr. Fortune - H. C. Bailey - Страница 5

Table of Contents

BIRDIE screamed like a sea-gull and leapt on to the stage. The audience rumbled the usual applause, and Dr. Reginald Fortune put up his opera-glasses. He considered himself a connoisseur in the art of music halls, and Birdie Bolton was unique and bizarre. She was no longer young, and had never been pretty. A helmet of black hair, a gaunt face which never smiled, a body as lean as a boy’s, which sometimes slouched and sometimes jerked—such were her charms. She wore nothing much above the waist but diamonds, and below it barbaric flounces in a maze of colour. She began to sing in a voice wildly unfit for the strange creature she looked—a small, sweet voice—and what she sang was a simple ditty about her true love forsaking her. And then she went mad. There was a shrieking chorus—can you imagine a steam whistle playing rag-time?—and a dance of weird, wild vehemence. The lean body was contorted a dozen ways at once, the long white arms whirled and stabbed. She seemed to be a dozen women fighting, and each of them a prodigy of force. It was not a pretty dance, but it had meaning.

Birdie sank down panting on her crazy rainbow flounces and nodded at the audience which thundered at her.

Dr. Reginald Fortune shut up his opera-glasses. “She’s a bit of a wonder, you know,” he said to the naval lieutenant who was his companion.

“It’s a wild bird,” the lieutenant agreed, and as the rest of the revue was merely frocks and the absence of frocks they went off to supper.

In the morning, which was Sunday, Birdie Bolton came to see Dr. Reginald Fortune. It was her remarkable creed that she could not live in a noise, and so for years she had owned a house in the still rural suburb of Westhampton where Reggie and his father practised. The elder Dr. Fortune at first looked after her, but when Reggie came on the scene Miss Bolton, declaring with her usual frankness that she liked her doctors young, turned herself over to him.

By daylight Miss Bolton dressed, and even overdressed, the part of a brisk British spinster. She was very tailor-made and severely tweedy, and thus looked leaner than ever. But her eyes retained a gleam of devilment.

“You gave us a great show last night,” Reggie said.

“Were you in front?” said Miss Bolton, and made a face. “Oh, Lord! Sorry. I was rotten.”

Reggie understood that his professional interest was required.

“What’s the trouble?” he said cheerfully.

“That’s your show,” said Miss Bolton. “Put me through it.”

The conversation then became confidential and dull upon the usual themes of a medical examination. At last, “Well, you know, we don’t get to anything,” Reggie said. “This is all quite good and normal. What’s making you anxious?”

“Dreams,” said Miss Bolton. “Why do I have dreams? I never dreamed in my life till now.”

“What sort of dreams?”

“Oh, any old sort. Bally rot. One night it was a motor-bus chivvying me on the stage. One night May”—May Weston was her companion—“May would keep parrots in the bathroom. Then I hear a noise and wake up and there isn’t any noise.”

“Do you have this every night?”

“Snakes! Not much. Now and again. But I say, doc, it’s not fair. I don’t drink and I don’t drug. But I’ll be seeing pink rats if this goes on.”

“Is there anything worrying you just now?”

Was it possible that Miss Bolton blushed? Reggie could not be sure. “You’re a bright boy, doc. Be good!” She shook hands and gripped like a man. The big emerald she always wore ground into his fingers. “Birdie, the strong girl. Bye-bye,” she laughed.

On the next morning Reggie was just out of his bath when he was told that Miss Bolton’s housekeeper had rung up. Miss Bolton had had an accident and would he go at once. “Tell Sam,” said Reggie, and jumped into his trousers. Samuel Baker, a young taxi-driver whose omniscient impudence had persuaded Reggie to enlist him as chauffeur and factotum, had the car round and some sandwiches inside it by the time Reggie was downstairs. Neither he nor Reggie lost time.

Normanhurst, Miss Bolton’s house, stands by itself in an acre or so of garden, and is in the mid-Victorian or amorphous style. As Reggie jumped out of the car, the housekeeper opened the door. She was a brisk, buxom woman; she looked, and perhaps was, just what a housekeeper ought to be.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Betts?” Reggie said.

“It’s very serious, sir. This way, please.” She led the way to Birdie Bolton’s boudoir, stopped, took a key from her apron pocket, and unlocked the door.

“Hallo!” Reggie said.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have a shock, sir,” said Mrs. Betts, and opened the door for him.

Reggie went in. The sunlight flooded Birdie Bolton’s face, which was white. She lay on a sofa. She was in evening dress. There was an open wound in one side of her throat, and from it a red line lay across her bare shoulder, down her arm, to a purple stain on the carpet.

Reggie went across the room in two strides and bent over her. She had been dead for hours.

“Who found her, Mrs. Betts?”

“The upper housemaid, sir. She’s been having hysterics ever since.”

“Bah! Was the room just like this?”

“No, sir. Miss Weston was asleep in that chair.”

“What?” Reggie stared. The mistress murdered and the companion placidly asleep by her side—perhaps that would not have startled his calm mind. But he knew May Weston, and had written her off as a dull, simple creature—a cushion of a girl.

“Miss Weston was asleep in that chair,” the housekeeper repeated. “I saw her myself. I came in, sir, when Amelia—when the housemaid screamed. Miss Weston was in evening dress too. She didn’t wake at the screaming either—just stirred. I went to her and shook her, and ‘Miss Weston,’ I said, ‘whatever’s this?’ I said, and she woke up and looked round her, sort of heavy, and she saw Miss Bolton lying there and the blood, and she screamed out, ‘I did it—oh, I did it,’ and she looked at me very queer and she fainted.” Mrs. Betts stopped and stared at Reggie, waiting for him to express horror.

“So what did you do with her?” said Reggie. Mrs. Betts swallowed. “I had her carried to her room. Dr. Fortune,” she said with dignity. “I am told she’s come to and been crying.”

“Well, that’s natural, anyway,” said Reggie.

“Natural, indeed!” Mrs. Betts tossed her head.

“And what did you do next, Mrs. Betts?”

“I had nothing touched, sir. I locked up the room. And I telephoned to you and the police.”

“I’m sure you behaved admirably, Mrs. Betts,” Reggie murmured.

Mrs. Betts was appeased. “I could hardly bear it, sir. Such a sweet, good mistress as she was. A perfect lady with all her little ways, as you know, sir. And that Miss Weston! So soft and quiet as she seemed. I don’t mind saying, sir, I felt as if I was stone. Oh!” She shuddered and shook. “Vicious, I call it.”

Reggie was looking round the room. “I suppose it is murder, sir?” said Mrs. Betts in a tone that suggested she would like to have the hanging of Miss Weston.

“I suppose it is,” Reggie said. He crossed to the chair in which Miss Weston had been found sleeping and picked up from the floor close by a pair of scissors and a pointed bodkin with an ivory handle. Both were clotted with blood. Ugly things.

“Ah!” Mrs. Betts said. “That’s what did it. Put ’em down, sir. I left them there by her chair for the police to see.”

“You think of everything, Mrs. Betts,” said Reggie, and put them down and went back to the body of Birdie Bolton.

That stab in the throat, it was “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door”; it was a small wound to be mortal. A small neat wound which had rare luck to slit the jugular vein. Reggie looked back at the bodkin and the scissors. He noticed that Mrs. Betts had gone out.

There were other wounds. In half a dozen places the pallid shoulders and breast had bled. No one of these gashes was serious. They were just such as might be expected of those unhandy weapons, scissors and bodkin. It was that neat, lucky stroke at the throat which determined the fate of Birdie Bolton. The minor wounds suggested a struggle with some one in a passion, and that Miss Bolton had struggled Reggie found other evidence. The black evening dress had been dragged from one shoulder and torn, and there on that right shoulder were the blue marks of a hand that had gripped. Reggie’s examination became more minute.

Two men bustled in. A hand tapped Reggie’s shoulder. “Now, sir, if you please.”

Reggie stood up and confronted a pompous, portly little man.

“I am Dr. Fortune,” Reggie said. “Miss Bolton was a patient of mine.”

“Was,” said the little man, with emphasis. “She is a case for an expert now, Dr. Fortune.”

“That’s why I was examining her,” said Reggie sweetly.

The little man laughed. “A general practitioner is not much use to her now. Rather beyond you, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’ve not made up my mind,” Reggie said.

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry.” He waved Reggie off, but Reggie did not go. “You’ll only be in our way, you know. We’ll let you know if we want you at the inquest. Just for formal evidence.” Still Reggie did not move. “I am the divisional surgeon, sir,” said the little man loudly.

“I was wondering who you were,” Reggie murmured.

The little man swung round. “We’ll have the room cleared, inspector,” he said.

The detective inspector, who looked more like a policeman than seemed possible, strode heavily forward. “Hope you’re not meaning to give trouble, doctor,” he frowned. “Or I’ll have to take steps.”

“Fancy!” Reggie said. “Well, look where you’re going.” He walked across to the window and looked out at the roses.

“Clear out, please.” The inspector followed him.

“Zeal, all zeal,” Reggie murmured, and went.

There were two doors to the room. He did not use that by which they had come, but the other. He happened to know that it opened into Birdie Bolton’s bedroom.

There was some one in the bedroom. A startled dark face peeped round the screen by the bed. It belonged to a smart lady’s maid.

“Dear me, I thought this was the passage,” Reggie said.

“It is Miss Bolton’s bedroom—poor Miss Bolton.” The maid had a slight foreign accent.

“Of course it is. And you’re her maid, of course. Flora, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, doctor. Ah, you have seen Miss Bolton! You cannot do anything—no?”

“Miss Bolton is dead, Flora.”

“I was so fond of her,” Flora sighed.

“Well, I liked her. I suppose you heard nothing last night?”

“Ah, no. She have sent me to bed. And I sleep so sound.”

Reggie nodded. “It’s a bad business, Flora. Take me to Miss Weston’s room, will you?”

“Miss Weston! Ah!” Flora said, with tragic intensity.

“H’m. You think she——”

“I do not think. I feel,” Flora said.

“It’s a bad habit. Well——”

And Flora led the way. She was a plump woman of some age, but still comely enough in a dark, heavy fashion.

A tap at a door. “It is the doctor, Miss Weston,” from Flora. A sullen voice, “You can come in,” and in Reggie went.

May Weston was a squalid sight. Her natural prettiness, the prettiness of fresh youth, the bloom of pink and white, the grace of full, soft line had all gone from her. She lay a shapeless heap on her bed, her evening dress still on and all crushed and crumpled and awry, her yellow hair half down and tousled, her face of a bluish pallor.

“What do you want?” She stared at Reggie heavily.

“Well, this won’t do, will it?” Reggie smiled cheerfully and sat down beside the bed. “So why are you like this?”

“Haven’t you heard?” she cried.

“I’ve heard and seen,” Reggie said. “I can’t do any more there. But perhaps I can here.” He began to feel her pulse.

“I’m not ill.”

“Well, you never know.” He let her wrist go and bent over her. “Sleep rather sound, don’t you?”

“Oh!” She shuddered. “Why do you look at me like that?”

Reggie bent suddenly closer, and as suddenly sat up again. Then he laughed. “Like what, my dear?”

She stared at him and her lip quivered. “You—you! Oh, do you think I can be mad?”

Reggie shook his head. “Let’s begin quite at the beginning. Let’s preserve absolute calm. You dined with Miss Bolton last night alone? After dinner you went to her boudoir? That would be about nine?”

“Yes, yes. Mr. Ford came just after the coffee.”

“Ah! And who is Mr. Ford?”

May Weston blushed abundantly. “We—he has been here a good deal,” she stammered. “Oh, Dr. Fortune, it isn’t his fault.”

“Young or old, rich or poor—what is he?”

“Of course he’s young. I suppose he’s rich. His father makes engines or something in Leeds, and he is in the London office.”

“Sounds solid,” Reggie agreed. “And why does Mr. Ford call at nine p.m.?”

Miss Weston’s blushes were renewed. “He has been very often,” she said, and wrung her hands. “I shall have to tell, doctor, shan’t I? Yes. He met Miss Bolton once at supper and then he used to come here.”