The Silk Stocking Murders (9 page)

“Well; well,” said the culprit paternally, “let’s sit down and talk it over. Mr. Sheringham’ll tell you that official secrecy is rather a vice of mine. But now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, no doubt you can help us considerably.” As a metaphor applied to the circumstances of Lady Ursula’s death, Roger could not help thinking this was an unfortunate one.

Roger and the Chief Inspector sat down on one side of the table, and Pleydell, removing his overcoat, took a chair opposite them. He was in evening kit, in which his tall, well-made form showed to advantage, unlike those of most of the financiers Roger had met. Moresby began by putting his questions, which the other answered as readily as he could, and Roger took the opportunity, while the familiar ground was being covered once more without anything fresh appearing to emerge from it, to study their visitor anew.

The term financier conjures up a slightly repulsive picture. It is unfortunate that financiers, in the abstract, should constitute an idea that is repulsive, but so it is. No doubt they will bear it. The ideal financier is short, stubby, with squat fingers, small eyes, no hair and a protruding stomach. Pleydell had none of these marks of the tribe; considered as a specimen of humanity he was pleasant to look on, with sharp clear features, dark brown eyes that were perhaps the slightest bit hard but only if one looked at them very searchingly, and plenty of black, crisp hair; considered as a financier, he was an Apollo. His age was somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-five; it might have been either. Of course Roger had heard of him before the tragedy, as he had heard of Lady Ursula Graeme. Pleydell senior was of the financial rank that is known as “the power behind the throne,” meaning, in these days, the power behind the party; Pleydell junior had been spoken of for some years as more than a worthy successor, with several exploits of sheer genius on the financial battlefield already to his credit. Father and son were outstanding for another reason also; they were scrupulously honest, they were behind no shady deals, and they never crushed unless they were unnecessarily attacked.

Noting the lines of young Pleydell’s jaw, the glint in his dark eyes and the tiny lines about the corners of his mouth, Roger summed up his impression in a sentence: “When that man does learn that she was murdered, he’s not going to rest for a minute till he’s seen the judge put on the black cap.” A not unpleasing little thrill ran through him. Though he was the other’s junior by perhaps half a dozen years, he found himself looking at him just as, in his early ’teens, he had looked at his House football captain. It was not often that Roger suffered from an inferiority complex, but he came perilously near it at that moment.

Moresby, having hitherto been able to elicit nothing of very much help, was questioning Pleydell about the note Lady Ursula had left; warily, because he did not yet wish him to grasp their suspicions of murder. Roger understood that the Chief Inspector considered that more might be brought to light in these early stages if Pleydell remained in ignorance of that. Murder, especially where one’s own fiancée is concerned, is apt to upset one’s sense of proportion.

“No,” Pleydell said, “I agree that the wording is curious, but I can’t tell you anything else about it. It’s in her hand-writing, of course; otherwise I might have been tempted to suggest that it had nothing to do with the case at all.”

“You’re sure of that, naturally?” Moresby asked. “That it’s in her handwriting, I mean. Quite sure?”

“Of course,” Pleydell replied, surprised. “What else—oh, you mean, it might not have been left by her at all?”

“Something like that. Look at it this way. The wording’s so curious that we might almost say that it was written on some other occasion altogether and got there by mistake, mightn’t one? Well, can you give us any help on those lines? Ever seen it before, for instance, or heard of it?”

Pleydell looked puzzled. “No, I can’t say I have. But how should I? I mean, supposing it had been left there for Miss Macklane at some other time.”

“But it wasn’t. I’ve ascertained that. You’re quite sure you can’t help us with that note, then?”

“Quite. Except that I agree with you that the wording is so remarkable that it might well refer to some different occasion altogether.”

The Chief Inspector studied the ceiling with some care. “You and Lady Ursula were in Monte Carlo last February, weren’t you?” he asked, apparently of a small fly.

“We were, yes,” said Pleydell, surprised again.

Roger pricked up his ears. Moresby had not mentioned this fact to him, and he did not at first see its significance. The next moment he understood.

“Do you happen to remember what date you got there?” the Chief Inspector asked casually.

Roger listened intently. The French “croquette,” he remembered, had died on the 9th of February.

Pleydell was consulting a small engagement book. “I got there on the 14th of February. But Lady Ursula went there earlier, at least a fortnight before me.” He flicked the pages. “Yes, she left London on the 27th of January.”

“I wonder if it would be giving you too much trouble, Mr. Pleydell,” remarked the Chief Inspector, “to make out a list some time for me of all Lady Ursula’s men friends, or even acquaintances, who were already in Monte Carlo or the neighbourhood when you arrived.”

“I will, yes,” Pleydell said, looking considerably mystified, “if you really want it. But what can that have——”

“I do want it,” beamed the Chief Inspector; and that was that.

Pleydell accepted his rebuff in good part, though it was plain that he had not an idea why he had been rebuffed at all, which is the most irritating kind of rebuff there is. “When I arrived?” he said. “Not the ones that came after myself. Lady Ursula, by the way, stayed on after I did. I left on the 3rd of March, and she was there for another fortnight or so.”

“Well, take the second week in February, Mr. Pleydell,” said Moresby with apparent carelessness. “The ones that were there when you arrived, or any you’d heard of who left during the preceding week. As full as you can make it. That will do well enough.”

A few minutes later it was intimated that Pleydell might leave and that the police could now be considered to have the matter in hand. Should anything further occur to him he could always reach the Chief Inspector on the telephone.

“Well, we didn’t get as much as I’d hoped,” Roger said, rather ruefully, when they were alone together.

“Except that about Monte Carlo,” Moresby pointed out. “That’s a bit of luck, you know, Mr. Sheringham. He hadn’t been engaged long then, and he’d be bound to have noticed all Lady Ursula’s friends of his own sex, couldn’t have better conditions for the observation we want; we might just as well have been there ourselves. Mark my words, his memory won’t slip a single man that Lady Ursula spoke to that fortnight.”

“Oh, and talking of lists, there’s something I forgot to tell you,” said Roger, not without excitement, and went on to explain the one of Janet’s Dorsetshire friends which he had obtained from Anne.

“Ah!” said Moresby significantly.

“In other words,” Roger pointed out unnecessarily, “if by any luck one name figures on both lists, we’ve got our man!”

“We know who he is,” corrected the Chief Inspector, and left the rest unsaid.

R
OGER
was thoughtful as he returned to the Albany that evening and mixed himself a nightcap before going to bed. This case was so different from his others that he was in danger of finding himself a little lost in it. With the others it had always happened that he had a multiplicity of motives and possible criminals, so that a solution had involved merely the narrowing down of the evidence till it pointed definitely to one of the suspects.

Here was the complete opposite. In place of several possible motives there was, in reason, no motive at all, except that of a sexual lust-murder planned by a twisted mentality; and in consequence the valuable pointer which an obvious motive affords, and which is in nine cases out of ten the thing which first directs the attention of the police towards the person ultimately proved guilty, simply did not exist at all. Moreover, in place of the large company of former suspects, was just blank nothingness. Nobody was suspect, everybody was suspect. The canvas Roger had to survey was so vast that it might be considered as infinite. The whole world was suspect.

He got into bed and tried to sleep, but his brain buzzed, revolving determinedly round the endless possibilities of the case. The note of optimism on which he had parted from Moresby had ceased to resound in his mind; the early hours of the night are no place for optimism. Before he had been in bed thirty minutes he had decided, once and for all, that there could not be the slightest possibility of the same name appearing on both Anne Manners’ and Pleydell’s lists. A lucky coincidence like that belonged only to fiction; things did not turn out that way in real life. No, he must give up that tenuous hope and find some other angle from which to attack the problem.

And the annoying thing was that, out of all the puzzles he had tackled, this was the one, the most baffling of the lot, that he was most anxious to solve; for if he did not contribute something of very real value to the partnership which he had succeeded in inaugurating, he was quite certain that neither Moresby nor the authorities at Scotland Yard would ever let him in on the inside of a really interesting case again. And Roger was extremely eager to be in on the inside of really interesting cases.

He kicked and turned. It was too much to hope that he could solve the case off his own bat, with Moresby there as well and all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him; but he did want to direct the lines of the chase along the right trail. Moresby, of course, was concentrating on Lady Ursula’s note; and if by any chance he could find out to whom it had been written, the case was as good as solved. But how could he? Was it worth Roger’s while to concentrate on the note too? Hardly. At following up a single outstanding clue Scotland Yard had no rival in the world; for an amateur to work on the same lines was simply a waste of time.

No, he would leave that to Moresby, and if, against all probability, Moresby was successful, then he deserved all the credit; in the meantime Roger would get to work in a different way, collecting all the infinitesimal data which Moresby was inclined to ignore, and trying to deduce something from them. And if
he
was successful he would not only deserve the credit but, so far as the authorities at Scotland Yard were concerned, would jolly well see that he got it! After Ludmouth, Roger was not at all inclined to stand modestly aside from a brilliantly successful solution, in the manner of the story-book sleuths, and present the blundering police-detective with all the credit.

He spent two and a half hours in examining all the infinitesimal data and was unable to draw a single further deduction from them. He then rose, swallowed three aspirins in a strong whisky-and-soda, and returned to bed. This time he got to sleep.

On paying a visit to Scotland Yard at eleven o’clock the next morning (it gave him an infantile thrill to pass the guardian of the door with a nod and be allowed to proceed unquestioned to Moresby’s room), he found the Chief Inspector seated at his table, concentrating. In front of him lay the note. Roger smiled a secret smile. It was as if the prosaic Moresby was invoking its essence to rise up and proclaim its secret.

“Morning, Mr. Sheringham,” he said, with an abstracted nod. “Just take a look at this letter, will you? Notice anything queer about it?”

“Beyond what you pointed out, that it seems to have seen a little wear and tear, no.”

“Ah, but what about the paper it’s written on?”

“I know nothing about papers,” Roger smiled, seating himself on the edge of the table. “That sort of thing’s your prerogative. It’s no good giving me a bit of scrap paper like that and expecting me to be able to furnish its complete history from the time it was a Celanese vest, or whatever they do make that kind of paper from.”

There was a gleam of triumph illuminating the Chief Inspector’s rather stolid face. “Scrap paper, eh? But you see, Mr. Sheringham, that’s just what it isn’t.”

“Oh?” said Roger politely. It was clear that Moresby considered it of the highest importance that this scrap of paper should not be scrap paper, but exactly why Roger was unable to see. “I’ll buy it,” he added. “Explain the excitement.”

“Even we poor boobs at Scotland Yard can make a deduction or two occasionally,” Moresby grinned unkindly, “even though we don’t write clever articles about murderers’ psychology for the newspapers. Just take a look at that piece of paper again, Mr. Sheringham. Feel it in your hand. That isn’t scrap paper; it’s a bit of real expensive notepaper.”

“Ah!” said Roger, understanding.

“Yes,
and
it’s been cut,” went on Moresby. “
And
there was a reason for the cutting. Now do you sec what I mean?”

“I do. The address has been cut off. Good for you. It would be a printed address, ten to one, and you can——”

“
And
there was something cut off as well as the address,” interrupted the Chief Inspector, who was making no bones about enjoying his own perspicacity; it has been mentioned in a former chronicle that even Chief Inspectors are human. He paused deliberately.

“I told you I’d buy it,” Roger urged in humble tones.

“I’m surprised at you, Mr. Sheringham,” the Chief Inspector mocked. “I am really. I thought you were such a one for clever deductions. You don’t see what I mean, even now? Well, well! Just think what you’d do if you were writing a note to a friend in a hurry like that; in his own rooms, too, as the wording of that note shows. Wouldn’t you——”

“Write the friend’s name at the top, and draw a line under it!” Roger exclaimed. “Yes, of course I should. Moresby, you’re a genius.”

“Well, you tumbled to it at last,” said the Chief Inspector, in distinctly disappointed tones. “And I won’t say it wasn’t clever of you to think of that line,” he added handsomely, “when you did get there. Just look at the right middle of the top edge—
there.”