The Silk Stocking Murders (16 page)

“I was just thinking that the defending counsel would worry about it,” Roger pointed out mildly.

“Oh, it does leave the loophole; there’s no doubt about that. But then, as the Superintendent says, the whole case is full of loopholes.”

The Superintendent, still prowling about, with an enormous magnifying-glass, grunted in the distance, as if to emphasise the multiplicity of loopholes.

A thought occurred to Roger. “What about the family solicitor, with the beard and the gold-rimmed spectacles?”

“Well, what about him, Mr. Sheringham?”

“I mean, he sounds much more like the type we’re after than the athletic-looking, handsome man you’ve, picked out. Have you checked up on him yet? Does anybody in the Mansions own to a bearded solicitor in a top-hat?”

“No, we haven’t started that end yet. Tucker will get on to that as soon as he’s free. But anyhow, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby pointed out patiently, “it’s no good you saying that the other one doesn’t sound like the type we’re after. We’ve got to go on facts, not types. The old gentleman couldn’t have done it, because he was out of the place just after half-past twelve and the murder wasn’t committed-till one o’clock at the very earliest, probably half-past. No, it lies between the artisan-chap and the other, with the odds heavily on the other, because I’ve no doubt Tucker will be able to find out all about the artisan to-morrow.”

“I suppose it does,” Roger agreed, with a reluctance which rather surprised himself. “But it doesn’t seem right, somehow.”

“It’ll be right enough when we catch him,” said Moresby with happy optimism.

“Well.” came a grumbling voice from the other side of the room, “if you two ’ve done arguing, I’m going to get back to the Yard. And you’d better come with me, Moresby. I want to see how those photos ‘ve come out.”

“There doesn’t seem much more we can do here,” said Moresby. “You’ll keep the man on at the door, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. We won’t let anyone in yet awhile. You never know. Well, this has been a waste of my time, I’m afraid. Are you coming, Mr. Sheringham?” Roger was evidently not to be allowed to investigate without supervision.

Roger jerked his mind off finger-prints, their prevalence in fiction, and their irritating absence in real life. “Yes,” he said. “I may as well go to—— Wait a minute! I believe I’ve got an idea!”

The two detectives looked at him without enthusiasm. Roger’s ideas, it would appear, left them cold.

“You have, Mr. Sheringham?” said Moresby, but more by way of making conversation than anything else.

“Yes. You were saying there were no finger-prints to connect this man with the flat. Superintendent. I take your word for it that there aren’t any inside, but have you thought of looking outside?”

“And where,” queried the Superintendent heavily, “might a man be expected to make any finger-prints that are going to be any use to us
outs
i
de
the flat, Mr. Sheringham?”

“On the bell-push, Superintendent,” said Roger sweetly. He thought the Superintendent deserved that much.

“Well, that’s a good idea, now,” said Moresby handsomely.

The Superintendent bestowed a sour look on him. It was the Superintendent’s rule, one rather gathered, never to praise the ideas of amateurs to their faces. Praise is not good for amateurs, clearly considered the Superintendent.

Nevertheless, he consented to look at the bell-push.

“He ought to have been the last person to push it,” Roger explained happily, as they trooped out into the hall. “Miss Deeping wouldn’t; she’d use her key, of course. And the door’s been open ever since then, more or less. Besides, you remember the porter said that our man was
carrying
a pair of wash-leather gloves, not wearing them. There is a chance that he didn’t put them on till he got inside.”

On the landing the Superintendent bent down and examined the bell-push through his magnifying-glass. “Humph!” he grunted, and produced a little tin of black powder. Pouring some of the powder into the palm of his hand; he blew it very gently at the-bell-push, then blew away the superfluous powder. On the white porcelain stood out in clear, black relief the imprint of the middle portion of the ball of a thumb, the important papillary ridges standing out distinctly. He bent again and scrutinised it for a long minute.

“Not either of the girls’,” he announced at last, with no sign of emotion. “This may be one to you, Mr. Sheringham. Moresby, see that this isn’t disturbed and have a photograph taken of it as soon as possible, will you?”

Roger looked as demure as he could and said nothing.

T
HAT
evening Roger suffered badly from reaction.

It seemed inexpressibly tame to remain at home alone, thinking over the events of that momentous day; and yet to go out for mere amusement, to a theatre or a concert, would be sheer anticlimax. He badly wanted to talk over the case with somebody, but had not the face to inflict himself further on Moresby or anybody else at Scotland Yard; especially since, from being something like a joint-partner on equal terms, he had now shrunk to a mere excrescence on the great organisation which had at last taken the affair definitely in hand. Roger rather resented being looked upon as an excrescence.

He toyed with the idea of a visit to the little creature who had shared Janet’s flat, Moira Carruthers. It was some days now since he had seen her, and after what she had done for him in the early stages of the case he did not wish to appear neglectful of her now that it had passed out of her orbit. Then he remembered that she would be at the theatre and gave up that idea, not without relief. Was there nobody else with whom he could discuss things, and not have to be too guarded in what he said?

Of course there was! He jumped out of his chair grabbed the telephone-book and looked up Pleydell’s number.

Luckily Pleydell was at home. To Roger’s carefully worded query as to whether he would care to come round to the Albany and talk over a matter of some importance which had arisen since they lunched together, Pleydell replied with some emphasis in the affirmative, adding that he would be round within twenty minutes. Roger understood the emphasis. The evening papers had been discreet, but one and all they had reported the new tragedy, though Scotland Yard’s interest in it had not, of course, been mentioned.

Roger filled in the time till Pleydell’s arrival by adding the developments of the day to the rough diary he had been keeping of the case, with everything that had been learned from the porter and Miss Deeping in such detail as there was. He also chronicled the discovery of one finger-print, and by whom.

Pleydell arrived punctually during the twentieth minute and at once began to question Roger as to the latest development. His perturbation, for so imperturbable a man, was obvious. He repeated his threats to call in the best private detectives that money could hire; he even talked of sending over to America for some of Pinkerton’s men, reputed to be the best private detectives in the world. The account of the porter’s evidence and the finding of the finger-print (on which he congratulated Roger with a warmth which was in strong contrast with Superintendent Green’s official coolness) did something to soothe him, and Roger set himself to do the rest.

“Don’t spoil the broth, Pleydell!” he urged. “You promised you’d do nothing if I kept you in touch, and I’m doing that. We’ll get to the bottom of it all right. Why, Moresby told me straight out that he’s got a pretty shrewd notion already about the identity of the finger-print maker.”

“He has?” Pleydell said eagerly, pausing in the restless perambulations he was making up and down the room. “Who does he think it is?”

“Well, he wouldn’t actually tell me the name,” Roger said, not without a little embarrassment. It is difficult, after pointing out that you are hand-in-glove with Scotland Yard, to have to explain that the hand is not always in the glove. “Wouldn’t commit himself till he’d verified it, or some nonsense. I believe the Superintendent must have been at him about me. It’s quite evident that
he
doesn’t like the idea of me being mixed up officially with Scotland Yard.” Roger managed to convey the idea that there existed a good deal of jealousy at Scotland Yard of gifted amateurs.

“But he thinks he knows, eh?” said Pleydell, disregarding the gifted amateurs and the professional jealousy they have to suffer. “Well, that’s something. Good God, Sheringham, I wish they’d hurry up and get this man. I shan’t have any peace till they do. This wretched girl this afternoon—I couldn’t help feeling when I read about it in the paper that somehow
I
was responsible. I ought to have prevented it somehow; I knew this brute was loose and I hadn’t managed to catch him.”

Roger nodded. “I know. That’s exactly how I felt. It’s absurd, of course, but it seemed to me horribly callous to think that you and I must just have been tackling our jam omelettes when the poor girl was being killed. I remember saying as much to the Assistant Commissioner.” Roger was not actually hinting that though unlettered Superintendents might be cool with him, Assistant Commissioners fed eagerly out of his hand; but the words rolled smoothly off his tongue.

“The Assistant Commissioner? Oh, Sir Paul Graham, yes; he’s the Assistant Commissoner now, isn’t he? I know him slightly.”

“Yes, he said he’d met you. Now look here, Pleydell,” Roger said firmly, “stop pacing up and down like a lion in a cage, help yourself to a whisky and soda, and sit down here by the fire. I want to talk to you, and I can’t while you’re rampaging up and down.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“This case, of course. I always have to talk about these things to somebody,” Roger said frankly. “It’s a dreadful nuisance for my victims, of course, but it helps me a lot; it clarifies what ideas I may have as no amount of silent thinking can do.”

“Well, you can have the use of my vile body for your talking-stool till the small hours,” Pleydell said, with a faint smile, “and the more you talk, the better I’ll be pleased. I’ll help myself to that whisky and soda and sit down at once, to show I’m in earnest.” He did so.

Roger refilled his pipe and lit it with some deliberation. He wanted to collect his ideas.

“This is what I want to get off my chest,” he began, “and you can see why the police, not excepting my excellent friend Chief Inspector Moresby, can’t qualify for the role of confidant in this particular matter. I’ve got a feeling in my bones that Scotland Yard’s working on the wrong lines!”

“You have?” said Pleydell, with the interest proper to a Watson.

“Yes. I’ve been saying so all the time about that notepaper clue they’ve been pinning their faith to, and I feel it in this new case just as strongly. In my opinion this is
not
the kind of crime that’s going to be solved by the ordinary police methods of this country. It has a psychological basis which, I’m quite convinced, can only be uncovered by the application of imaginative psychological methods.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you there,” said Pleydell.

Roger thought for a moment. “Take this finger-print, for instance. What’s the good even of a finger-print if they can’t find the finger that fits it? There’ll be no specimen of that print in their records, as there probably would be if it was a case of burglary that we were considering. The only use of it is to check their conclusions when they’ve found their man; it isn’t going to help them to find him. And the porter’s description of the fellow with the blue overcoat and the wash-leather gloves might apply to several thousand young men in London alone. No, the more I think of it, the more sure I am that this latest crime isn’t going to help us in the least towards finding our man. Which means that the police will be thrown back more or less into the state they were before, and will go on concentrating on that notepaper clue for their results. And they may get them that way, of course,” Roger was ready to admit, “but I very much doubt it.”

“Well?”

“Well, if that’s the case, it seems to me that Scotland Yard and I are going to diverge henceforward in our lines of investigation. I don’t consider myself bound to follow them in the least. If I think they’re on the wrong track, I shall break off it into one of my own making.”

“Quite right.”

“And,” said Roger, “I want you to help me.” He shot a glance at the other.

“With pleasure,” Pleydell said quietly. “It’s very good of you, and I welcome the opportunity. You know I’m as anxious as you to lay this devil by the heels. And,” he added soberly, “I’ve a good deal more personal interest in doing so.”

Roger nodded. This had not been an impulsive offer. He had considered its feasibility before ever telephoning to Pleydell. What was in his mind was that no harm could possibly come of its acceptance (he never doubted that it would be accepted) and the probabilities were that it would lead to a great deal of good. Pleydell was a very clever man, and no doubt a shrewd judge of the human animal, and his co-operation could not fail to be helpful on these counts alone. But above that, by being drawn into the official net he would be effectually prevented from acting as a possibly disturbing free-lance; and Roger was very anxious that a superfluity of cooks should not spoil this particular broth.

“It’s this way, too,” he added, smoking thoughtfully “The Scotland Yard machine is excellent as a criminal-hunting organisation; none better. But it’s just this very kind of case that puts grit in its bearings. The ordinary murderer, you see, isn’t a criminal at all in one sense; I mean, he very often hasn’t got a criminal mind. I’m not referring to the burglar who loses his head when trapped and shoots in panic; I just mean the usual, unpremeditating murderer—for of course the great majority of murders are unpremeditated.”

“So I suppose,” Pleydell murmured.

“Well, if you examine the records of successfully detected murders in this country,” Roger continued, now firmly mounted on his hobbyhorse, “you will see that the criminal already known to the police who turns murderer, is nearly always caught; once he gets on the records of Scotland Yard his chances of getting away with a murder are almost nil. In murders of that type our detective service probably has a better record than any other. The thoroughness of the entries are astonishing; not merely the physical characteristics but the psychological idiosyncrasies as well—Bill Jones likes a bit of raspberry jam out of the larder when he’s finished a burglary;Alf Smith always enters a house through a trap-door in the roof; Joe Robinson kisses the maidservant whom he’s held up with his revolver; that sort of thing. No wonder the criminal-murderer leaves half a dozen characteristic signs, quite apart from definite clues, by which the police can tell his identity at once.”