Death in Albert Park (16 page)

“Attack?”

“You know what I mean. It was nearly an attack.”

“Are you sure about that, Mrs. Whitehili?”

Stella looked up sharply.

“Sure? What else could it have been?”

“It could have been someone waiting in a car who realized he was causing anxiety to Miss Whitehill and wanted to reassure her.”

“It could have been the Emperor of Ethiopia,” retorted Stella tartly. “But it wasn't. It was the Stabber. There's not the slightest question about that.”

Carolus looked at the bony, muscular-looking and rather unattractive woman. He could believe her capable of methodical charity if not spontaneous kindness but he found that he could not like her.

“Let's use our commonsense,” she went on. “What ordinary man would be sitting in a car alone in Crab-tree Avenue at that time in the evening, wearing a cloth cap, glasses and a raincoat? He would be asking for trouble, whoever he was. You don't seem to realize how people feel in this district. If a few of them had caught this man they would have been capable of…”

“Hanging him from a lamp-post?”

“Very nearly, I believe. Then, if he was the innocent you suppose…”

“Pardon me, 1 supposed nothing of the sort. I said he could have been someone waiting in a car.”

“He wasn't. If you mean someone on legitimate business. As I was just going to say, if he was, why did he make off like that when Viola screamed?”

“You have answered that, Mrs. Whitehill. There was strong feeling among your neighbours. He could have suddenly realized what might be thought about him and done the wisest thing—decamped. That's exactly what I should have done in the circumstances.”

This altercation was interrupted by Viola.

“You should have seen his eyes!” she said dramatically.

“What about them?” asked Carolus.

Viola seemed somewhat confused.

“They were glaring,” she said,
“red
and glaring. The eyes of a murderer.”

“Didn't you say he was wearing glasses?” asked Carolus mildly.

“Of course.
And
a cloth cap.”

Carolus decided to leave it at that and turned again to Mrs. Whitehill. But before he could speak Viola said—“Don't forget I saw the knife, too.”

Guessing that the knife would have become both vivid and circumstantial by this time Carolus again tried to leave the subject, but Mrs. Whitehill herself intervened.

“Yes, what about that?” she asked.

Carolus, driven into a corner, said—“It was very natural in the circumstances that Miss Whitehill should see something of the sort.”

“You mean, I'm making it up?” cried Viola angrily.

“No. No. I mean it made itself up. You saw it all right, Miss Whitehill, but if the murders had been done
by shooting you'd have seen a pistol, or if by strangling a noose.”

“I'm not a complete fool,” claimed Viola. “I saw the knife. I didn't imagine it.”

“Whatever you saw won't help us much now,” said Carolus pacifically. “What I wanted to ask you about, Mrs. Whitehill, was the night when Joyce Ribbing was murdered. The night of your Bridge party.”

“Oh, that. There's nothing much to be said about that,” said Stella Whitehill. “You know who was playing.”

“Your husband was not at home?”

“My husband? What on earth's he got to do with it?”

“He wasn't in, anyway?”

“Certainly not. It was a Bridge four.”

Carolus had to be satisfied with this somewhat ambiguous answer and said “Quite” in an encouraging voice.

“He came in about half an hour after Joyce had gone, as a matter of fact. In time for supper. Been down at the Mitre, of course. Where he is now.”

Carolus felt it wiser to leave this aspect of the matter.

“When Joyce Ribbing left you that evening, Mrs. Whitehill, you did not feel the smallest anxiety about her going home alone?”

“Not the smallest. Why should we have, then?”

“There had been a brutal murder, after all, only a fortnight before, in this avenue, and no arrest had been made.”

“One does not suppose, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, that murders go in districts. If we thought about it at all we supposed that someone had reason to murder that schoolmistress. We did not suspect a maniac.”

“I see.”

“One swallow doesn't make a spring, you know,” persisted Stella Whitehill, who had reached an impasse in her Patience and begun to cheat, “After the other two murders and Viola's narrow escape we knew where we stood. But not that night.”

“Dr. Ribbing phoned about eleven?”

“Yes, and said Joyce wasn't home. Even then it did not occur to me till Viola suggested it,”

“After you had left the phone?”

“Yes, About half an hour after. We were just going to bed when Viola remembered about the schoolmistress and I phoned back to the doctor to hear if Joyce had come in. When I heard she hadn't I really did begin to wonder whether anything had happened.”

“I was sure ofit,” said Viola almost ecstatically.

“Yes, my dear,” said Stella harshly. “You were sure ofit. But
thmjou
didn't know that Joyce Ribbing had a lover, and I did.”

“Nothing else happened that evening to alarm you? Nothing after Joyce Ribbing left? You heard nothing from the street? I ask because this is one of the only houses in the avenue which hasn't got television.”

“I won't have it,” explained Stella Whitehill, adding a dismissal of the whole invention, “it's a bore. No, we heard nothing.”

Carolus asked no more but rose to leave. As he was thanking the two women there was an interruption. A middle-aged man of medium height and commonplace features burst in, somewhat drunk.

“Don't tell him anything!” he said. “I've just been talking to the police. They say not to tell him anything.”

“If you had told us that an hour ago …” began Stella.

“I've only just heard. I was talking to the police.
They said if he calls on us we're not to tell him anything.” He turned to Carolus. “That's what they said,” he added apologetically.

“I don't think you need worry,” suggested Carolus gently.

“I don't worry,” said Stella. “What use are the police, anyway? They haven't prevented these murders and here we are still living in conditions of siege. Neither Viola nor I can go out at night.”

“I can, though,” said Whitehill with a chuckle.

A storm was rising in Stella's square-set face and Carolus quickly took his leave. He did not envy White-hill the next half hour.

He wanted to interview only two more people in this connection, but one at least of them would be difficult and painful—Dr. Ribbing. Until now he had witnessed nothing that could be called grief in this affair. Gerda Munshall had given the impression that she had taken up life again with renewed zest after the loss of her friend and Jim Crabbett had been philosophical, to say the least of it. But from Heatherwell and others Carolus had gathered that Ribbing was quite broken by his loss and he felt diffident about disturbing him with questions. However, he would try.

Whether or not Ribbing thought he was a patient Carolus could not decide, but he was shown to the doctor's consulting room. He briefly stated his business and was surprised to see the doctor nod and say he would tell Carolus all he could.

He was a little under average height and his face had a somewhat lugubrious expression which was not altogether the result of the tragedy, Carolus judged, but an expression of a morose character. He decided that as far as possible he would let the man say what he liked
without more than prompting him here and there.

“These murders are the work of someone who has a certain knowledge of anatomy. They have been done with almost surgical skill, though considerable force was used.”

“That is the quickest way to the heart, I believe?”

“That was the classical idea as certain sculptures show us. It has been used by suicides, I believe.”

Carolus stared.

“Is it possible?”

“Quite, for a strong and determined man. Not, of course, that any of these murders could have been suicide.”

“Would you say that the combination of knowledge, skill and force used in the first murder is sufficiently rare for us to be sure that the second murder was the work of the same person?”

“In my opinion, yes. It
is
possible, of course, that the second was the work of an imitator, but it is highly improbable. I believe that a homicidal maniac was responsible for all three.”

“And that the maniac's choice of victims was entirely dictated by circumstances?”

“That seems obvious. If he was someone who would arouse no particular attention in Crabtree Avenue he could wait and watch till the circumstances combined. All he wanted was a dark night on which the weather would keep most people at home, a woman alone and no spectators. He could get these quite easily and did so twice within three weeks. As you can imagine, Mr. Deene, I have given a great deal of thought to this.”

“What about the third murder?”

“Crabtree Avenue was under continuous observation. He had to go somewhere else.”

“Why didn't he go to another district altogether? Wouldn't that have been safer?”

“My conclusion is that he was a resident here.”

“Without transport then?”

“Probably. Another thing. All three of these women have been of less than average height. My wife was distinctly short. It may also be that the murderer had to add this to his conditions. If he himself was not tall it would be difficult to use that blow downward at the shoulder.”

“Yes. I've thought of that. Do you suspect anyone, Doctor?”

The question came so swiftly and was so straight-aimed that Carolus himself was surprised at his own audacity.

Ribbing thought long before answering.

“I have no
reason
to suspect anyone,” he said, “therefore I shall voice no suspicion of any individual. But it seems to me unlikely that it could be a stranger to the district…”

“Why? Since no one familiar was observed hanging about on any of the three nights in question, an unfamiliar person need not have been.”

“I disagree. If the murderer was a resident in Crab-tree Avenue he could have waited in his own house for a favourable time. And the fact that when he had to move his venue he chose another so near seems also to argue that he was a local. Personally I am convinced of it.”

“So you suspect someone in this district of no more than average height whose movements cannot be accounted for on any of the three occasions?”

“Exactly. If I were investigating that is the way I would proceed.”

“Very interesting, doctor. But you would come up against a snag at once. Who can account for his movements on three specific nights spread over several weeks? He may
think
he can, but unless he keeps a very detailed diary he would be in difficulties. Then you get alibis which may be honestly intended but are faked or self-convinced, a whole chaos of lies, conscious or unconscious.”

“You have experience of these things and I have not. But I should have thought it possible to narrow it down.”

“From what? There would be scores of people who would have to be considered. Do you, for instance, exclude the idea of a woman as the murderer?”

“Not altogether.”

“Then where would one start? I tell you almost nobody could completely account for his movements on all three nights. Could you, for yours, for instance?”

“I could. In two cases I would have nothing that could be accepted as an alibi. The one alibi would exclude me from your list though.”

“If nothing else did.”

“Nothing else
would”
said Ribbing emphatically. “If, as we must suppose, these murders are the work of a schizophrenic nobody is excluded, not even those who have suffered by them. It will be circumstances and facts which will enable you to trace the man, not personality or characteristics. A schizophrenic homicide might be the mildest and most gentle man or woman so far as we know him.”

“Would there be nothing in his everyday conduct to suggest an abnormal state of mind at certain times?”

“I am not an alienist. What little I have learnt of
psychiatry I have picked up as most G.P's do, in the course of my work. I think the symptoms are pretty varied. A tendency to isolation is one of them. There may be delusions of various sorts, silly beliefs and so on. Sudden excitement, too. Illogical thinking. Persecution mania. Delusions of grandeur. It's not very helpful. I tell you, I think you will only get your man by supposing he is sane, as he is most of the time.”

“You don't think anyone could have had a motive?”

A grim smile moved Ribbing's tight lips.

“In all three cases?” he said. “No. I do not. Unless by motive you mean some obscure sub-human urge which may have actuated him. Certainly nothing which in a sane and normal mind could be a motive.”

“Just old-fashioned blood-lust, in fact?”

“Yes.”

Carolus saw that an expression of sadness and fatigue was deepening on the doctor's already gloomy face. He decided to ask no further questions but to get in touch with Turrell without mentioning him to the doctor. But he had a surprise.

“I suppose you intend to see Raymond Turrell?” Ribbing said.

“I must,” said Carolus quietly.

“He's to be found in a pub called the Apple Tree in Chelsea most evenings at about seven, I understand.”

“Thanks.”

“He lives at 14 Rotterdam Street, Chelsea. His telephone number is Cheyne 2004,” said Ribbing in a dull monotonous voice.

“You know him?”

“I've met him. He seems a very agreeable kind of man. And now, if you'll excuse me.”

“I'm most grateful to you, doctor.”