Читать книгу Seven Dead - J. Jefferson Farjeon - Страница 6

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The doctor’s voice recalled them to the drawing-room.

“Here’s your solution!” he exclaimed excitedly as they ran in. “I found this under him—what he was writing just before he pegged out. My God! Can you credit it?”

He held out a crumpled sheet of paper. On it was written, in bold capital letters:

WITH APOLOGIES

FROM

THE SUICIDE CLUB

Kendall stared at the half-dozen grim words, while the others looked at him. Then he stared round at the seven members of the suicide club. Then he stared at the paper again.

“No—I can’t credit it,” he said slowly. “This is in ink.”

“Well, it was probably written before they committed suicide,” retorted the doctor.

“And then he wanted to add something with the pencil?” queried Kendall. “Let’s see if he did.”

He turned the paper over. On the other side, in pencil, was:

“Particulars at address 59·16s 4·6e G.”

The pencilled addition was not in bold capitals, but in ordinary, wobbly writing.

“And a thorough job they’ve made of it,” commented the doctor. “I’ve looked at them all.”

“Yes, and now it’s my turn,” answered Kendall.

He passed from one to the other, peering for several seconds into each face before going through the pockets. When he had finished he straightened himself and walked slowly round the room. As he passed the fireplace he paused to look up the chimney. Then he said:

“I’m going over the rest of the house and the grounds. I expect you’ve got some more to do yet, doctor. If you’ve finished by the time I have, and the others haven’t turned up, meet me in the dining-room for a talk. Sergeant, stand by the doctor in case he wants anything. Come along, Mr. Hazeldean.”

Hazeldean smiled as he left the room again with the inspector.

“Am I being useful,” he inquired, “or is it just that you don’t want me out of your sight?”

“Let’s say a mixture of both,” suggested Kendall. “I let you go once, and you found a bullet-hole I was searching for.”

“Yes. And I didn’t much care for the spot where I found it.”

“Canvas doesn’t feel pain.”

“No. And some pictures deserve to be shot. Only this one didn’t.” The inspector gave him a sidelong glance. “Touché, inspector! That kid got me! What are you doing—looking for bloodstains on the stairs?”

“I’m looking for anything I can find, Mr. Hazeldean, but so far this seems to be a bloodless tragedy. What’s your newspaper?”

“None in particular.”

“I see. A free-lance.”

“Yeah.”

“Under nobody’s orders but your own?”

“Are you sure that’s going to make any difference?”

“We’ll talk about that presently.”

The top floor had four bedrooms and a bathroom, but only two of the bedrooms appeared to have been recently occupied. One of the two was obviously the room of the absent owner, Mr. Fenner, and the other, equally obviously, was that of the niece. It was the niece’s room that had been the subject of Sergeant Wade’s special report, and Kendall and Hazeldean agreed that its condition suggested a hurried departure. The two shoes—dark brown and rather worn, one of them on its side—were in the middle of the floor near the end of the bed, and the dress, a morning frock, made a little soft brown heap on the carpet beside a chair.

“Didn’t I hear the sergeant say that dress was on the chair?” inquired Hazeldean.

“You did,” answered Kendall. “The sergeant has been a naughty boy. Taken it up to examine it, and replaced it nearer the edge of the chair than where he found it.”

“And it slipped down after he left?”

“You’ve got it.”

“I suppose you’re sure you’ve got it?” said Hazeldean. “Someone else may have taken it up to examine it.”

“What? Since the sergeant left the room?” Kendall shook his head. “When you’re surrounded with trouble there’s no need to manufacture more! However.” He walked to a wardrobe, opened it, and poked his nose into a row of dresses. “She uses violet scent.”

“Quite smart,” smiled Hazeldean.

“When you don’t play the violin, or haven’t got a wooden leg,” Kendall smiled back, “smartness is all you’ve got to fall back on. Not that it needs much smartness to detect violet scent. Well, there seems nothing more up here. Let’s get down.”

“Will you answer a question?”

“Probably not.”

“You don’t believe in this suicide club, do you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I can be smart, too.”

“That’s the trouble with you journalists. Sometimes you’re too smart, and the smartness goes into the next edition before it’s been properly digested. We’re going to talk about the suicide club in the dining-room, but not till I’ve finished my preliminary investigations.”

Inspector Kendall found nothing in the kitchen quarters beyond the evidence, already mentioned to him by Hazeldean, of Ted Lyte’s visit; He examined the pantry window carefully, mentally cursing the little crook as he did so. Had the rascal’s fingerprints obliterated any others? Yet he realised the debt of gratitude he owed the very man he was cursing. It was unlikely that Hazeldean would have entered by the back window after failing to get any response from the front-door bell, and but for the crook the tragedy inside Haven House would still have remained undiscovered, and Kendall would still have been yawning and doodling at the local police station.

He left the house by the back door, unbolting it to do so.

“That’s the wood I came through,” said Hazeldean behind him.

“And your boat’s in the creek beyond?”

“Just inside the point.”

“On holiday?”

“Combining work with it. Doing a yachting series. ‘Yachting for Fools.’ I’m a yacht maniac.”

“And you came ashore to stretch your legs?”

“And to call at the post office for mail. Which, by the way, I’ve not done.”

“Did you notice any dead animals as you came out of the wood?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Cats?”

“Afraid not.”

“There’s one by that little gate.”

“So there is.” The yachtsman-journalist focused his eyes on the little black object, then turned to his companion curiously. “I take it you’re not being just conversational?”

“I’m fond of conversation,” answered Kendall, “but when I’m on a job I never indulge in it for its own sake. I once talked utter nonsense to a woman till she used the word ‘knowledge’ with a long ‘o’. I’d heard that pronunciation over the telephone—and she’s in prison now for attempted poisoning. You came round by the side lawn, didn’t you?”

“Whew! Yes.”

“We’ll do the same.”

They walked round slowly. Kendall paused at the french window to examine it, and when they came to the front of the house, went right across to the narrow path on the other side. He vanished along the path, returning abruptly at the sound of a car in the lane.

“I think, your reinforcements,” said Hazeldean.

“About time, too,” grunted Kendall. “Will you go into the house while I speak to them? I’ll join you in the dining-room.”

Hazeldean nodded and complied.

He found the dining-room empty, and while he waited he stared at the painting of the pretty little girl with the bullet through her heart. He wondered where she was, and whether the shoes in the bedroom upstairs belonged to her. Three rooms in this grim house had stories to tell, but walls lack tongues. What were the stories—and how did they all connect?

Figures moved outside the window. One came and stayed. The back of a constable made a sinister blot on the view. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and low voices. The incredible tragedy of seven dead people was being revealed to new eyes. Neither the footsteps nor the voices interfered with the brooding silence of the place. They seemed in a queer way to accentuate it, to develop it into a conscious thing... Hazeldean turned suddenly, as the doctor entered the room.

“Well, have you got your headline?” inquired Doctor Saunders rather acidly.

“I’m always open to suggestions,” replied Hazeldean. “Have you one?”

“How about ‘Mass Suicide’? That ought to draw the pennies.”

“Yes, but the coroners jury might not agree. I think I’ll wait for the inquest.”

They heard Kendall’s voice in the hall. He was telephoning to the local station. A couple of minutes later he joined them, followed by Sergeant Wade and a portly inspector from Millingham.

“Inspector Black,” Kendall introduced the latter, and then turned to the Millingham officer. “This is the Mr. Hazeldean I’ve mentioned.”

Black stared at Hazeldean without much favour and then gazed round the room.

“Looks like a bit of a rough-house,” he commented, when his eyes rested on the overturned chair.

“That’s what I thought when I first came in here,” answered Kendall, “but that chair was knocked over by our burglar.”

“How do you know that?” exclaimed Hazeldean.

“Just learned it from the station,” replied Kendall. “The fellow’s begun to talk. It’s that picture we’re more interested in, Black. See it? I want you to tell me why seven people about to commit suicide in a stranger’s house should begin by shooting a painting?”

On the point of answering, Black turned again to Hazeldean, and Kendall quickly interpreted his confrere’s dubious expression.

“You needn’t worry about him,” said Kendall.

“Aren’t you taking me very much for granted?” asked Hazeldean.

“Tell me if I’m wrong?” suggested Kendall.

“If you were wrong, I obviously wouldn’t tell you.”

“If I were wrong, you wouldn’t indicate any flaw in my logic.”

“Suppose I were subtle?”

“Suppose I am? Carry on, Black. This man may turn out a thundering nuisance before we’re through, but meanwhile he may be useful to us, and we can take it he hasn’t killed seven people. Besides,” he added dryly, “haven’t these seven people committed suicide?”

“You don’t think so,” retorted Black.

“But you do?”

“How do you get away from that written message?”

“Ever heard of a red herring?”

“Well—yes—there’s always that possibility,” admitted Black slowly. “Yes, certainly. Only somehow it doesn’t seem quite logical—”

“Whereas it is perfectly logical,” interrupted Kendall, “for seven people—emaciated, filthily clothed, ill assorted, and with nothing on any of them to identify any one of them—to walk through country lanes unseen—”

“How do you know they walked?”

“I’m guessing they didn’t arrive in the Lord Mayor’s coach.”

“And how do you know they’ve not been seen?”

“We can check up on that, anyway. But, whether they were seen or not, and whether they arrived on roller-skates or stilts, they end their journey at a conveniently unoccupied house—”

“May I interrupt?” asked Hazeldean.

“I want you to interrupt,” replied Kendall. “I’m making statements to annoy you into offering better ones.”

“Well—since I’ve got to justify your hope that I may be useful—I think I’ve hit upon two flaws in your reasoning already.”

“Number one?”

“If seven people set out to commit suicide, they wouldn’t march with drums, flags and banners.”

“You mean, they would try not to attract attention. Objection allowed. If they set out to commit suicide. Number two?”

“You used the phrase ‘conveniently unoccupied house.’ Plenty of houses are unoccupied.”

“Probably a house-agent would corroborate you. Nevertheless, Mr. Hazeldean, this time it’s objection overruled. You set out, as one of a party of seven, and march through a district of which you have no previous knowledge, and see whether you can find an unoccupied house so convenient that you can enter it—have you wondered, by the way, how they entered it?—and make use of it for wholesale self-destruction. Of course, your party may be lucky, but the odds are that you’ll be wandering about all day and all night.”

“All right, but why shouldn’t they have had a previous knowledge of the district?” inquired Black, “and of the house itself, for that matter? There’s nothing in their message to preclude it.”

“I agree. That’s one point I’m getting at,” answered Kendall, “because to me it makes the whole suicide theory less feasible. Seven people calling on a person they know, to die in his house while he’s out, eh? A queer sort of a joke! And, if there were any point in the joke, it should be self-evident without a message. Listen. I’m not putting the suicide theory out of court. There’s some mighty queer story behind all this, and maybe, when we’ve unearthed it—as we’re going to—suicide will fit the climax. But I’m not going to accept that theory until it’s explained to me how they got into the house, why they nailed up the shutters, why they stuffed two weeks’ papers up the chimney, how they destroyed themselves—that’s your job, doctor, and it’s going to mean Westminster Abbey or professional extinction for you!—who used the revolver, why he or she shot a picture in another room, where the Fenners are, why they left in a hurry, and how the devil—here’s another little tit-bit I’ve just had from the station, Mr. Hazeldean—how the devil these seven people, before settling down to their final job, locked themselves in the drawing-room with the key on the outside.”