Case for Three Detectives (15 page)

“Yes. Deed poll, and all that sort of thing.”

“No. I've never changed my name. Why?”

“Oh—just wondered. Known the Thurstons long?”

“A few years.”

“Come here quite a lot, I suppose?”

“Yes. What's the idea of all this, Plimsoll?”

“Curiosity, old boy. Do you happen to be hard up?”

Very coldly Strickland said, “No thanks. Why, did you want me to lend you something?”

Lord Simon was quite unperturbed. “April Boy came in, then?”

Strickland half-rose. “Is it any business of yours what bets I make?”

“Awfully sorry, old man. I suppose bets should be considered sacred. Between a man and his God—or his bookmaker. But my man Butterfield did happen to hear from a gentleman of similar calling to himself that you were in a tight corner this week. And if you want to put a hundred pounds on a horse at six to one, without anyone knowing it, I suggest your not using the extension of a telephone which has a man like Butterfield glued to the main.”

“I shall tell Thurston how damnable I think it, that this sort of snooping should go on in a house where one's a guest.”

“Far more damnable things than that have gone on in the last twenty-four hours. There has been, for instance, a murder.”

“I can't see that it justifies your hanging round listening to my conversations on the ‘phone.”

“Well, let's waive the point, shall we? Then perhaps you will tell me just how matters stand between you and your bookies?”

‘I'm damned if I will.”

“Then I must tell you. That hundred you put on this
morning was a last fling—an absolutely desperate shot. You're up to the eyes in debt, you had no means of raising the money, and you shoved this on knowing that if the horse did not win you could not find the hundred. You know only one bookie who would take the bet. Well, you've won. I congratulate you.”

Strickland was calmer now, but sounded more dangerous. “Look here, Plimsoll, you're here—though God knows who asked you here—to find out who murdered Mary Thurston, not to ferret out details of my betting “

“But suppose—mind, I'm only just supposin'—that there was some sort of relationship between them?”

“What the hell do you mean? How could there be?”

“What were you doing in Mary Thurston's room before dinner last night?”

Strickland turned furiously to me. “I've never liked you, Townsend. I've always thought you a mean-natured sort of devil. But I didn't think you'd join in this sneak's game.”

I was about to explain that I should have had no right to keep any information like that to myself, when Plimsoll went on. “Well,” he insisted, “what were you doing there?”

“I had something to talk over with Mary Thurston.”

“And couldn't she lend you the money?”

I expected Strickland to break out again—I even wondered if there would be a fight. But perhaps he was a little cowered by the fact that the investigators knew of his visit to the dead woman's room. At all events, I was surprised to hear him say, “No,” in a deep voice, but quite clearly.

“So you stole her diamond pendant?”

Again no outward sign of anger. “No. She gave it to me. Or at least told me to pawn it. It would raise what I needed.” After a silence he went on. “I had told her on the ‘phone the day before that I was in a hole, and she had promised to help me. Now she said that she was awfully sorry,
something unexpected had happened, and she couldn't. I've no idea what she meant.”

“It's funny,” mused Lord Simon, “that when you happen to be speakin' the truth, you're so much more convincin'.”

“That was the truth.”

“Indeed? Then your troubles were over?”

“It seemed so.”

“Until this morning—when you found that the police had charge of the pendant. Quite. Nothing that could be called ‘trouble' had happened in the meanwhile, I suppose?”

“In the meanwhile Mary Thurston had been murdered.”

“Ah yes. We must get back to that. You were the first, I think, to go to bed?”

“I believe I was.”

“Bit unusual for you?”

“Perhaps. But I'd been up early that morning. I was dog-tired.”

“Are you always dog-tired after getting up early?”

“No. I was last night.”

“You had no other reason for going to bed so soon?”

“I was a bit bored. Townsend and the Vicar were rather much, in one room.”

I took no notice, of course, inwardly deciding that I would not allow myself to be drawn into suspecting Strickland merely because he was attempting to be rude to me.

“And yet although you were so tired, you did not go to bed?”

“I had several letters to write.”

“They must have been urgent.”

“They were.”

“When did you leave your room next?”

Without a moment's hesitation Strickland said—“When I heard the screams.”

“Not before?”

“No.”

“Did you hear Mary Thurston come to bed?”

“Not consciously.”

“You heard no voices from her room?”

“No. The wireless was playing right underneath me.”

“You did not guess that anyone was in her room that evening?”

“Certainly not.”

“Was your window open?”

“I don't think so.”

Lord Simon stared straight at Strickland for a moment, and then with a gesture indicated that he had no more questions to ask.

M. Picon said, “Monsieur Strickland, I have only one question to put to you. It is about those so horrifying screams. Perhaps you will be so good as to think carefully before you tell me what I want to know. It is a little matter, but so much depends on it.
Where did those screams come from?”

I was less surprised at this ridiculous question than I would have been if I had not already heard it asked of Stall. Although I realized that I was unoriginal in doing so, and though I knew that my predecessors in the thought had always been proved ignominiously wrong, I could not help feeling that the little man had gone off the rails at last.

“Where did they come from?” repeated Strickland. “Why, from Mary Thurston's room, of course.”

“You are sure of that?”

“But it never occurred to me to doubt it.”

Précisément.
Is that why you are sure?”

“No. No, even when I first heard the screams, I knew they were from Mary Thurston's room.”

M. Picon stared at him, as though he wanted even more confirmation, but apparently decided to let it go at that. Strickland walked over to the decanter and helped himself to a drink.

“I call this third degree,” he said with a rather sheepish grin. “I need a good stiff drink.”

“That is a sign of the cross-examination,” said Sam Williams.

“But not a sign of the Cross,” said Mgr. Smith, waking up for the first time in the last three-quarters of an hour.

Alec Norris, who followed, could tell us very little. His room was on the other side of the corridor, and he had heard nothing, he said, until he had heard the screams. He had seen no one after he had gone up to bed, except Enid, who had been going into Williams's room as he had come back from the bathroom

“You had a bath?”

“Yes, I always bath at night. I work afterwards, and I find that it clears the brain.”

“Then you returned to your room?”

“I did. And settled down to write.”

“Do you usually dress after having a bath at night?”

“Invariably, if I'm going to work.”

He spoke precisely and calmly. All traces of the hysteria he had shown at first had vanished. His skull-like head was high, his cold eyes met his questioner's.

“You were the first to reach Mrs. Thurston's door. Can you remember in what order the others came?”

“I think so. Thurston first, bounding upstairs like a madman, followed by Williams and Townsend. Then Strickland out of his room, then I think Fellowes from upstairs, and, perhaps half a minute later, Stall, also from upstairs.”

“Did you notice the girl Enid?”

“Yes. But not for some minutes. I think it was after they had broken down the door. She came out of Thurston's room as white as a sheet. Fellowes spoke to her, and she ran straight downstairs.”

“You have a very accurate memory, Mr. Norris.”

“I have a trained memory. I have taken a course in Pelmanism.”

Rather unexpectedly Mgr. Smith turned to him. “I understand, Mr. Norris, that yesterday evening you expressed an interest in crime from what you called the psychological point of view?”

“Something of the sort.”

“Presuming that the phrase means anything at all, do you find this particular crime interesting from the psychological point of view?”

Alec Norris looked at him, and for a moment I thought a shadow crossed his face.

“I do not understand this crime,” he said at last.

“Nor I,” said Sam Williams sadly.

A
ND
now for the Vicar, I thought, with some relish. For of all those who had been interrogated there had been none who, from the first, had seemed to me so likely to do or say something quite unanticipated as Mr. Rider. He had seemed to me, on the evening of the crime, the only person with any real mystery about him. There was his rather grotesque appearance, his reputation for eccentricity and fanaticism, there was his very odd question to me yesterday, and most singular and inexplicable of all, the discovery of him kneeling at Mary Thurston's bedside only twenty minutes after the murder.

Surely, I felt, after so much inconclusiveness, the investigators would extract something definite from this man. Surely now even I would begin to see some of that ‘light' which was guiding M. Picon.

The Vicar smiled nervously yet civilly to us as he came in, and sat down quickly. His long fingers he kept twisting into intricate cat's cradles before his chest. He too, I was certain, was afraid of something. He waited to be questioned as though with any one of the innocent queries put to him might come disaster. And yet, I thought, he found it hard to concentrate. His nervous mind went wandering off, and his pale eyes grew vacant. One thing was certain—the man was suffering.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Rider,” began Lord Simon. “Fact is, we're hopin' you can help us a bit.”

“I'll do alllcan.”

“You've known the Thurstons for some time?”

“Ever since they've lived here: They have attended my church—and have been good enough to invite me to the
house more frequently than I could very well accept. You see, I had no means of returning their hospitality My home …” He shrugged, and ceased speaking as though he had suddenly recalled that he might be saying too much.

“Was there anything in this household that—so to speak —got your goat? Any goings-on, as they say, which worried you?”

“I think not.”

“Yet you asked Mr. Townsend last night if he had noticed ‘anything wrong'.”

The Vicar paled. “Mr. Townsend, whom I
then
took to be a young man of good sense and discretion, might have seen some evidences which had escaped me.”

There was no mistaking the indignation in his glance. I realized that my role as an associate of investigators carried its penalties. I had certainly made two enemies at least.

“Evidences of what?” said Lord Simon evenly.

“Evidences of … something scandalous. I had heard rumours.”

For the first time in my brief personal acquaintance with Lord Simon he showed unmistakable anger. “And you considered it your duty to investigate the truth of those rumours?”

“Yes.”

“To go into a house to which you had been invited as a guest, and question another guest about them?”

“Yes.” Then very quietly, almost meekly, he added,
‘I Have
you never felt such questioning to be your duty?”

Lord Simon did not condescend to reply. And why should he? His questions were prompted by his determination to find out the truth'about a crime; the Vicar's were the merest Nosey-Parkerdom, if they were nothing worse.

“And what, exactly, were those rumours?”

“I hardly like to revive them now.
De mortuis,
you know,
de mortuisT

“Mr. Rider, I hardly think this is a moment for you to
profess scruples about blackguardin' another person, even if that person is dead. What were those rumours?”

“It had been bruited in the village, had in fact reached my ears, that some sort of… understanding existed between Mrs. Thurston and the chauffeur.”

To all of us, I think, came the disappointment that must be felt when a promised
bonne-bouche
of scandal turns out to be stale news. I, for one, had hoped that Mr. Rider would produce something new.

“Had you yourself seen any evidences of it?”

“Not actually.”

Lord Simon spoke and looked as though there was an unpleasant smell in his nostrils. It was quite evident that he did not like the Vicar.

“And what you heard did not prevent your accepting the Thurstons' invitation to dinner last night?”

“I considered it my duty to …”

“Ah yes. I was forgetting your duty. Did you happen to know that it was Mrs. Thurston's habit to retire to bed at eleven o'clock?”

The Vicar stared silently at Lord Simon. “No,” he said at last.

“Yet you had dined here … how often?”

“Oh many times, many times.”

“Did you never stay to chat with Dr. Thurston after Mrs. Thurston had retired?”

“Occasionally.”

“And you have never heard her make a remark to the effect that eleven o'clock was her bed-time?”

“Now that you mention it, I do seem to remember something of the sort.”

“What time did you leave the house?”