A Murder is Arranged (7 page)
Read A Murder is Arranged Online
Authors: Basil Thomson
“Mademoiselle Coulon was, of course, very much upset at the news I had to break to her.”
“Ah yes!” She threw out her hands with a little gesture of horror. “But surely Margaret had no enemies in England. You have, of course, very clever police at your Scotland Yard. They are working on the caseâyes?”
“Oh yes; their best men are working on the case,” said Forge. “I should not be surprised if they called to see you as soon as they hear that you are in England and that you knew Margaret Gask well.”
“But I know of no enemies that she had.”
“Perhaps it was no enemy,” suggested Oborn; “it may have been a friend.”
“Friends do not kill defenceless women.” Then she added thoughtfully: “But a jealous lover might.”
“He might,” said Oborn with meaning.
“You are forgetting the fur coat,” said Forge, to whom this innuendo was distasteful.
“Fur coat?” she asked. “What has a fur coat to do with it?”
“Merely that it disappeared on the night of the murder.”
“She was wearing it, you mean?”
“We think she must have been, as it was such a cold night.”
“Then the motive was robbery?”
“The whole mystery is why was Margaret in the lane at that time of night,” said Forge. “There could have been nothing to take her out except to meet someone.”
“But what contradiction,” she said with a little moue. “If she had a rendezvous it must have been with a lover and yet a lover, even if he killed in jealous rage, would not steal a coat.”
“That's what puzzles us all,” said Oborn. “I think perhaps if you had been here all the time your woman's intuition might have gone a long way towards solving the mystery.”
“I don't know,” she said. “Of course Margaret was very beautiful and a beautiful woman never lacks lovers.” She passed her hand over her forehead and turned to Mr Forge. “You will forgive me but I have been travelling for so many hours and this news has upset me⦔
“You would like to go to your room,” said her host. “My housekeeper will show you the way and see that you have everything you require.”
“Thank you: that will be very nice.”
D
ALLAS' NEXT REPORT
, received after Boxing Day, read as follows:
“In connection with what has come to be known as the âmurder in Crooked Lane' I have to attach the medical report of Dr Smithers on the death of Hyam Fredman. It will be remembered that at the inquest held yesterday the jury returned a verdict of âmurder by some person or persons unknown.'”
Richardson turned to the medical report and noted that it was in the handwriting of Dr Smithers himself. He touched his bell; a clerk answered it.
“Ah! You're the very man for this job,” said Richardson. “You can decipher the handwriting of doctors who ought to be dropped into a canal with a stone round their necks as a warning to the profession to write legibly.”
The clerk looked at the document with knitted brow. “Very good, sir,” he said with resignation; “you shall have a typed copy but this is worse to decipher than most of them.”
“I've often wondered,” said Richardson, “how many deaths have been caused by chemists making up poisonous prescriptions because they can't read them. There must be an unholy pact between chemists and doctors to keep their dreadful secrets from the outside world on whom they both live. Let me have a transcript as soon as you can.”
When the clerk had left Richardson turned again to Dallas' report.
“We have established beyond doubt that Hyam Fredman was a receiver of stolen goods with a connection among persons who had access either as guests or servants to houses known to contain valuable property. He was suspected, though proof was never obtained, of receiving a masterpiece of an old Italian painter stolen by burglars from the house of Mr Eidelston, in Shepherd's Market, Mayfair, and disposing of it to a well-known receiver in Paris. In view of the fact that he was a receiver the following persons may be regarded at this stage of the enquiry as suspects:
“(1) The butler, Alfred Curtis, office number C.R.0.2753. To steal a valuable while employed as a servant on a forged character would be quite in accordance with his criminal record, though it is right to say that he has never been convicted of any crime of violence.
“(2) Arthur Graves. When we interviewed this man he said that his relations with Hyam Fredman were confined to borrowing money from him. A search of the money-lending books, very carefully kept by Fredman, do not disclose the name of Graves as a debtor but in a locked desk in the antique shop was found a receipt for £50 signed by him. This would suggest that he was disposing of stolen property. He knew both Hyam Fredman and Margaret Gask.
“(3) Gerald Howard Huskisson. This young man was known to have had a violent quarrel with Margaret Gask during which he or she was trying to wrest some solid object from the other's hand. This object could have been the emerald, stolen by one of the two. His statement that he retired to bed at 11 P.M. that night can neither be verified nor disproved.
“It may reasonably be assumed that Hyam Fredman went to Crooked Lane on the night of the nineteenth and received the emerald from Margaret Gask, who was either alone or perhaps accompanied by Huskisson. The finding of a revolver discharged in two chambers beside Fredman's body seemed to suggest that this pistol may have been used in the murder of both.
“The disappearance of the fur coat which Margaret Gask must have been wearing might support a theory that her murder was committed by an outsider simply for the object of stealing a coat that would have high value among furriers.
“Although there is nothing definite to connect Douglas Oborn with the crime there is a discrepancy between his statement that he did not know the murdered woman and that of the woman herself, who spoke to Mr Forge of looking forward to meeting Oborn as an old friend.
“Let me now return to the question of the revolver. The weapon lying by the body of Fredman is a Colt of an ancient pattern, rusty and ungreased. The three undischarged chambers contained cartridges and bullets that would fit the rifling. One of these cartridges has been submitted to a gunsmith who reports that the powder has been in the cartridge for a considerable time, probably not less than two years, since the grains showed traces of damp; indeed he was surprised to hear that the fulminate was still efficient in view of the evidence of damp. I authorised him to test one of the live cartridges in order to ascertain its penetrative efficiency: he found that the explosive quality of the fulminate was entirely destroyed and deduced that this must have been the case also with the two empty cartridge cases; moreover, neither of these two empty cases showed any sign of blackening. From these facts I submit that the weapon lying by the body of Hyam Fredman was placed there as a blind. We have traced the sale of this weapon. Mr Cohen, a pawnbroker in Sun Street, Kingston, has identified it as one sold by him to Hyam Fredman, who produced the necessary pistol certificate. Fredman told him that he wanted it as a curiosity, as he had quite a collection of ancient weapons. Against this is the fact that we found no other weapons on the premises of Mr Fredman: probably he wanted the revolver merely to intimidate possible burglars.
“The medical evidence disproves the idea of suicide. We have as yet no indication pointing to any person having visited the shop that night. As already reported, we had to gain access to the shop by employing a locksmith; we found the back door, leading into the yard, also locked but the key was missing. This would lend support to a theory that Fredman himself opened the shop door to admit the murderer, locking it behind him, and that the murderer made his escape through the back door, locking it behind him and taking the key with him and scaling the wall of the yard which would have given him access to a narrow lane. This theory is supported by scratches found by us on the surface of the wall, which is only eight feet high. The murderer may have hoped to induce a belief that Fredman had killed Margaret Gask and then committed suicide with the same weapon.
“In the case of Margaret Gask no bullet was found, which is not surprising, but in a later search of Fredman's room a flattened bullet was found which corresponded to an indentation in the brick wall at a height of five feet four and three quarter inches from the floor: this must have been the bullet which traversed Fredman's head.
“At this stage of the enquiry I did not think it wise to interview any of the persons who were staying at Scudamore Hall, for fear of alarming them. Mr Forge consulted me confidentially about engaging a private detective as one of his servants and I undertook to find him a man who could be thoroughly relied upon. Accordingly I engaged a retired detective inspector who undertakes private enquiriesâex-inspector William Spofforthâwho is in the house now as an under butler. He fully understands the need for circumspection and he is not personally known to Alfred Curtis. I shall receive from him reports at two-day intervals. Mr Forge has promised solemnly that he will not divulge either to any of his guests or his servants the identity of ex-inspector Spofforth.
“In the meantime there has been an addition to the party at Scudamore Hallâa young French lady who had been an intimate friend of Margaret Gask. Though Mr Forge did not altogether approve I took an opportunity of interviewing this young lady in order to find out what she knew about the dead woman. At first she was reluctant to discuss her but at a second interview she was more forthcoming and gave me the following information: six months ago this lady, Mlle Coulon, entered the service of the Henri dressmaking firm in the Rue Royale, Paris, as a mannequin. The star mannequin in this establishment was, she said, Margaret Gask. On pressing her for further particulars she told me in confidence that Margaret Gask appeared at big social functions beautifully dressed by Henri with jewellery on loan from Messrs Fournier, Rue de la Paix; that she was wearing at a ball at the Opera House a valuable diamond clip which she âlost.' On this she was discharged. I begged Mlle Coulon to tell me in confidence whether there had been any doubt about the loss being genuine and she admitted rather evasively that this had been the case. I asked her whether she had kept in touch with Margaret Gask after her dismissal from the firm and she admitted that she had. It was about that time that Margaret met Mr Forge; Mr Huskisson was also in Paris.
“All this goes to confirm our belief that Margaret Gask was a woman who lived on her wits and was probably concerned with others in thefts. One point that we have not yet cleared up is how she came into contact with Hyam Fredman. This point we are now working upon.
“A
LBERT
D
ALLAS
,
Detective Inspector
.”
Richardson had scarcely finished his perusal when his clerk returned with a typed copy of Dr Smithers' report.
“You've been very quick. I suppose long practice of deciphering difficult handwritings has made you an expert.”
The clerk smiled. “I had very useful help, sir. Detective Sergeant Lomax was working in this department during the last days of the war and told me that he had had to decipher far worse scripts than this. Four words puzzled even him and we were going to leave them blank but in the end the context supplied the missing words.”
“Thank you,” said Richardson; “that is all for the moment.” He picked up the typed copy of the report and read as follows:
“I have this day made an examination of the body of Hyam Fredman. He appeared to be a man of a little over forty, well nourished and inclined to corpulence. All the organs were healthy. The cause of death was a bullet wound which had traversed the brain from left to right. The man must have been standing at the time, for the orifices of entry and exit were placed horizontally. I made a search for this bullet: it was not there. There was, however, on the brick wall a mark as if a bullet had flattened itself against the brickwork: the flattened bullet must have been carried off by the murderer. The weapon found within reach of the murdered man's hand could not, in my opinion, have been the one used by the murderer: the orifice of entry was too small to have been made by a bullet of the calibre of the Colt revolver found on the floor near the body.
“J. S
MITHERS
.”
Richardson took the report in his hand and went with it to the door of one of the luminaries of the legal department, which had lately been taken over by the commissioner's office at New Scotland Yard. He was a keen-looking solicitor of about forty with a long experience of preparing briefs for the Criminal Bar. Richardson had acquired the habit of consulting him on the general principle that two heads are better than one.
“Look here, Mr Jackson, would you run your eye over this last report of Dallas' and the medical report attached; both bear upon that murder case in Crooked Lane.”
“What I should like to know,” said Jackson when he had finished reading the report, “is what valuables this man Forge keeps in his house. He seems to have a little gang of suspects about him: they can't all have been after a single emerald, however valuable.”
“Dallas put that question to him and was invited to look over the house. He says that it was handsomely furnished in a modern way and that there were a number of silver ornaments of no great value but the plate was not solid silver.”
“Is he a collector of pictures, china or anything like that?”
“I believe not.”
“What's your opinion as to why these people have collected at Scudamore Hall for Christmas?”
“In my opinion they belong to the sort of gang that is glad to batten upon any rich man and get the run of their teeth during what is commonly described as the festive season.”
“Well, I can't give you any theory regarding the identity of the murderer without getting a good deal more information about the people than appears in Dallas' reports but my own feeling is that the motive for both murders was not robbery, but revenge or fear.”