Читать книгу Blood on His Hands - Max Afford - Страница 4

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Bertha Fenton pushed open the door of her tiny room on the "Weekly Informer" and, moving inside, dropped into a woven-cane chair near the table. For a while she sat limply, yielding to the pleasure of complete relaxation. The mirror on the opposite wall threw back her reflection—a dumpy, untidily dressed, middle-aged woman with sharp, almost cunning features centring about an arrogant beak of a nose. With her mousy hair drawn back and cut as short as a man's, Bertha Fenton looked every day her forty-three years.

A knock on the door aroused her. She peered through the grey haze of tobacco-smoke at the copy-boy who stood in the entrance. He pushed a sleek, pomaded head into the room.

"Mr. Armitage wants you, Miss Fenton."

Bertha made her way into the news editor's room and crossed to his desk.

Herbert Armitage, a prematurely bald young man wearing thick-lensed spectacles, leaned back in his swivel chair and waved a slip of paper. "Carstairs, nosing round the detective office this morning, ran across a pretty definite rumour that Judge Sheldon had been murdered—"

The woman sat up, her indifference dropping like a garment. "Not Sheldon, the K.C.M.G. of Spring Street?"

Armitage nodded; "The same man. It's a wonderful story—if it's genuine."

"There's just a chance that the dailies may not get on to it until late this afternoon," he said. "There's only one thing for you to do, Bertha. Get around there and bluff your way inside somehow. Keep your eyes open and don't let a word out to those daily scroungers."

In the office of the "Informer" Bertha Fenton stood out as an individual, unique almost. But the moment she set foot in the street the great moving throng swallowed her, and her eccentricities were lost in the bewildering kaleidoscope of colour and motion that packed the pavements and overflowed on to the streets.

Carnavon Chambers was a new block of apartments built at the top end of Spring Street. A policeman stood waiting under the striped canvas awning that decorated the entrance. He knew Bertha, and grinned as she approached. "You're the fourth," he told her. "Talk about vultures around a corpse."

The woman halted, standing with feet apart. "Don't be so damned crude, Thomas," she admonished. "Three here, you say? Who are the others?"

"Wilkinson from the 'Courier,' another new chap from the Associated Press—don't know his name—and that fair-haired mother's boy from the 'Globe.' Lascelles, isn't it?" Constable Graves eyed her closely. "How'd you come to get in on this, anyhow?"

"That well-known little bird," Bertha told him airily. She shrugged her shoulders and spoke quickly.

"Who's looking around for the Department?"

Graves considered a moment. "Four of them. Burford, the Coroner Doc Conroy, O'Connor the plain-clothes man, and the fingerprint boys."

"And who's in charge?"

"Denis O'Connor temporarily. They're waiting for Chief Inspector Read."

Bertha pursed her lips. "So-o—? It's that big, is it? The Chief Inspector himself?"

The constable nodded portentously. "In the flesh," he added impressively.

"Then I'm going up," Miss Fenton said abruptly

Like a bird zooming for cover, the elevator soared upward.

The steel cage slid to a stop, and Bertha, stepping out, found herself in a long, brown-panelled corridor. A few paces away from the lift-shaft, a narrow, circular staircase wound downwards. Outside an opening half-way down the corridor two uniformed policemen stood. They watched her suspiciously as she approached, and one, after a whispered conference with his companion, began to walk toward her. Bertha cursed under her breath. If they were going to be officious...

"You're not allowed along here, madam," the policeman told her brusquely. Six feet of blue uniform blocked her way so that she was forced to halt. Bertha stiffened. She fumbled in her bag and produced a tiny leather-and-cardboard square.

"I'm from the 'Weekly Informer,'" she said curtly. "Here's my Press pass."

The constable did not even glance at it. Neither did he move. "I don't care who you are or where you're from," he returned. "You can't come along here."

The woman checked the hot retort that rose to her lips. She realized that it would be foolish to quarrel with these officials at such a time. Producing a card and pencil, she scribbled a few hasty lines and handed the card to the constable.

"Would you mind taking that inside to Mr. O'Connor?" she said, trying to keep the harshness out of her voice.

Miss Fenton waited impatiently, a square-toed shoe drumming the carpet. So! They were trying to keep the Press out of this thing. Wilkinson, Lascelles, and the A.P. man must have got in with the first alarm at headquarters before the police realized the seriousness of the business. They had apparently given orders that all other reporters were to be refused admission. What luck that she happened to know Denis O'Connor! Because, the more dailies excluded from this murder, the more chance for the "Weekly Informer."

The constable returned and was beckoning to her. Bertha allowed herself a sniff, eloquent of the contempt she felt for this underling. Tossing her head, she strode past like a triumphant Amazon.

She was standing in what was apparently a bedroom, a small apartment made to appear larger by the skilful arrangement of the furnishings. Her eyes made a swift survey, took in the low bed, covered with scarlet satin eiderdown, the built-in cupboard and wardrobe, the inlaid table near the bed with its pipe and tobacco-jar, and the small bookcase standing in the far corner. On the opposite side of the room, a door leading to a larger apartment had been torn from its hinges and lay askew, portions of the shattered woodwork splintering about the lock. Bertha was staring at this ruin when it was pushed aside and O'Connor, a thick-set giant of a man with curly hair surmounting a good-natured moon-face, came out. He glanced at her and nodded.

"It certainly never pays to ask a presswoman a favour," he complained. "Sooner or later they'll ask for it back a hundredfold." But the twinkle in his blue eyes belied the tone.

Bertha Fenton grinned and took his hand in a grip firm as a man's. "You know these men, of course?" O'Connor was saying.

The woman nodded and glanced around, exchanging greetings. She recognized the stocky, dapper man with a dark moustache as Dyke Wilkinson, while the tall blond boy standing by the bed was Gilbert Lascelles of the "Globe." The third man had her puzzled for a moment, although she remembered having seen those pleasant, regular features photographed in a trade paper. Then the young man himself came forward, hand outstretched.

"Miss Fenton, isn't it?" he said. "My name is Yates—Martin Yates. I'm the new man on the Associated Press. Took Ken Hubbard's place about a month ago."

The detective spoke quietly.

"It's a bad business, Miss Fenton. We can't hope to hush it up, but we don't want a line more publicity than we can help. Especially at this early stage. In fact, they're getting the new Chief Inspector on the job—the big chief from London. The Coroner and the medical examiner are inside now, with Larsen, the finger-print man. I'll take you inside as soon as they're through. But you must promise to publish nothing save what we—the Chief, that is—actually gives you."

"Does that go for the others?" the woman demanded.

"Naturally."

"Then it suits me." Bertha tossed her bag and hat on the bed and sat down. "Now, what's it all about?"

O'Connor thrust his hands in his pockets. "There's not much we actually know," he said. "Briefly, it amounts to this. Judge Sheldon who has been renting this apartment for about two years, came out of that inner room about seven o'clock last night. He told his man, Hoskins, to take the evening off. The servant watched him return to that apartment, lock himself in, and cross to his desk. Then Hoskins went to his own room (which is farther down the corridor), dressed, and left the building, to return about eleven o'clock and go straight to bed. He says he rose about seven o'clock this morning, came in here, and discovered his master's bed had not been slept in. Crossing to the door of the inner room, he found it still locked, so he knocked. There was no answer. Believing that the judge must have spent the night away, he did not worry until about nine-fifteen, when something happened that aroused his fears."

Bertha, following this recital closely, looked up. "What was that?"

"At that time, the telephone-girl in the desk downstairs came to Hoskins and asked what was the matter with Judge Sheldon's telephone," O'Connor explained. "She said that the Judge had forgotten to replace the receiver on the hook, and although she had rung him several times in the morning he had not answered. This made Hoskins suspicious. While the manager telephoned police headquarters, three porters broke in the door of the apartment." The detective paused for breath. "They found the Judge sitting behind his desk. He was dead—stabbed in the back."

Miss Fenton nodded slowly. "I suppose it was murder?" she said shrewdly.

The detective looked, at her. "Suicide?" he suggested.

"It's happened before now," the woman reminded him.

It was Gilbert Lascelles who drawled from his corner: "Not in this case, Miss Fenton. You see, they can't find the weapon."

Denis O'Connor squared his shoulders like a man tackling an unpleasant task. "There's more to it than that,", he explained. His tone was harsh and awkward. "You people haven't seen the body. The murderer took a souvenir away with him. One of Sheldon's ears is missing. The right ear—neatly sliced off his head."

"I'll take you inside now," he announced. "And please remember to touch nothing. Do you understand—nothing at all!"

It was a much larger room than the one they had left—a long apartment lit by two tall windows in the outer wall. The massive glass-topped desk before the nearest window, the figured blackwood cabinet, the deep leather chairs scattered over the scarlet velvet pile carpet squares—these things bespoke dignity and comfort. At the far end of the room an ornamental grate housed an electric fire, and there were small cabinets and inlaid tables about the room. The floor, uncovered by the carpet squares, was highly polished.

Standing near the desk were four men. Burford was engaged in earnest conversation with Dr. Conroy. Larsen, with his insufflator, was busy searching the glass top for fingerprints. A young man standing near a photographic apparatus was watching him. As the reporters entered, Larsen and his assistant moved across to the long window behind the desk. Burford and the doctor, still talking, paced to the cabinet, leaving the desk clear. It was at that moment that the reporters had their first glimpse of the body of Sir Merton Tenison Sheldon.

It was propped up in a swivel chair behind the desk, slumping limply like a bundle of washing tied to give semblance to a human form. With both hands resting on the desk and the head lolling on one side, the eyes stared glassily. The pallid face still reflected the gracious somnolence that had marked the features during life, but the head was disfigured by a blackish clot of blood where the right ear had been removed.

As the reporters started to walk toward the desk, the Coroner's voice sounded authoritatively:

"Don't touch anything, please! And walk on the carpet."

Martin Yates was first to reach the desk, but Miss Fenton was only a split second behind. They stared at the body. The single-breasted coat, swinging open, showed the material of the waistcoat unstained. Bertha turned to the detective.

"Got it in the back, did he?"

O'Connor nodded. "Took him completely by surprise. Accounts, too, for the lack of expression on his face."

They walked around the desk. Wilkinson moved forward and touched the stain that smeared raggedly across the back of the coat. "Seems to have bled very little for a mortal wound," he remarked, his fingers touching the damp material gingerly.

"That's because of the weapon used," the detective explained. "Something resembling a long, thin piece of steel, very sharp and strong. Most of the bleeding would have occurred inwardly, according to the doctor."

"But why take his ear?" murmured Gilbert Lascelles. And no person offered an explanation.

Burford came forward again. At a nod from O'Connor, the reporters withdrew toward the shattered door. Now Larsen was working on the catch of the long window, and the tall frames stood wide open. Miss Fenton's eyes rested on that tiny balcony outside, the balcony overhanging a sheer drop of eighty feet into the street below.

The reporters crowded together in the doorway. The Coroner and the detective were bending over the dead man, transferring articles from his pockets to the desk. Presently they finished the task. Burford nodded, and O'Connor rejoined the others in the bedroom.

"Anything new?" Yates said eagerly, as he came in.

The detective nodded, his face shadowed. "We've found the key of the locked door," he told them.

"Where was it?"

O'Connor eyed them levelly. "It was in the dead man's waistcoat pocket."

There was a surprised, momentary silence. Then, as the full realization dawned upon the company:

"How could that be?" Wilkinson demanded. "Do you mean to say that the door was locked on the inside?"

O'Connor nodded slowly. "That's what it looks like, doesn't it?"

Gilbert Lascelles gave a droll whistle. "Good Lord—and those windows look out on to a sheer drop of eighty feet!"

"We're faced with an apparent impossibility," Bertha told, the room. "Seeing that Sheldon had the key, that door could have been locked only from the inside. As there are no other known entrances, it means that the murderer must have locked himself in with the dead man. And if he did that," said Miss Fenton forcibly, "where the sweet hell is he now?"

Dyke Wilkinson sniffed. "I once read a story in which a murderer climbed a sheer wall with suckers on his feet. And, if I remember rightly, he shot a man through a window. The story was called 'Strawberry Jam.'"

"'Raspberry Jam,'" Gilbert corrected him. "Carolyn Wells wrote it." He smiled. "Yes, I've read that one also. And now all we have to do is to examine the entire wall with a magnifying glass, looking for damp, circular rings the size of an ordinary breakfast-cup rim." He turned to the detective. "There's your case, Denis."

O'Connor regarded him unsmilingly. "There won't be any need for that," he told them. "Nobody came through that way into the room. Both windows were firmly latched on the inside when we broke down that door. It was one of the first things we looked at."

He broke off as voices raised in conversation were heard in the corridor. The next moment four men entered, and Miss Fenton, watching them as they filed past, named three. The tall, well-dressed man with the military bearing and the bristling grey moustache set against his ruddy face was Chief Inspector William Read. His two companions were plain-clothes detectives—Steve Donlin and Jed Armstrong. It was the fourth man she could not place. He was talking intimately with the Chief Inspector, who had taken his arm as they passed into the room. Bertha, who prided herself that she knew all the officials in the Criminal Investigation Department by their first names, puckered her brows over this stranger.

He was a man in his middle thirties, clean-shaven, with the face of a scholar, a face that might have been severe but for a pair of grey eyes that twinkled humorously. Of medium build, he had that lean fitness that comes from perfect training, and the broad shoulders and spare hips emphasized his well-cut, quiet clothes. One hand was buried in his pocket, the other had its long fingers clasped about a stick and gloves. At that moment O'Connor came forward. The Chief Inspector turned, and Bertha heard him say:

"I want you to meet a friend of mine from London—Mr. Jeffery Blackburn." The young man smiled, acknowledging the greeting quietly, and moved away. Read, about to follow him, appeared to notice the others in the room for the first time. He frowned and turned back to the detectives. "Who are these people?" he snapped. "They have no business up here. Who let them in?" He added quickly: "They haven't touched anything, I hope?"

Detective O'Connor, suddenly sheepish, explained the reporters' presence.

The peppery Inspector was not to be placated. "Get them out of here—at once!" he shouted. He turned and strode into the inner room, muttering to himself.