The Studio Crime (15 page)

“Thank you, Miss Shirley,” said Hembrow, rising. “That's all I want to know for the present. We'll wish you good evening.”

She preceded them slowly to the door, and paused with her hand on the knob.

“Mr. Hembrow,” she said slowly. “There's something—perhaps I ought to tell you—”

“What?”

She moistened her lips and spoke in a lowered voice.

“Ernest,” she said. “Ernest Greenaway. He was jealous. He hated Gordon. Often he swore he'd do him in. And him hanging about in the courtyard last night, in the fog. It seems queer, doesn't it?”

“Thank you for telling me,” said Hembrow stolidly.

She looked disappointed at his cool reception of her news.

“Well,” she said uncertainly, “I suppose you know all that already.” Her large eyes searched his impassive face for the information she wanted. “He terrifies me,” she said sullenly. “Always threatening and hanging about. Men like him aren't safe. One never knows what they'll take it into their silly heads to do.”

It was plain that Miss Shirley would not have been sorry to see her former betrothed convicted of murder and comfortably removed from her sphere.

Hembrow said indifferently:

“If he's been threatening you, you can have him bound over.”

“Fat lot of good that'd do,” muttered Pandora sulkily. “Oh, well! I can look after myself, I suppose. Good-bye.”

She smiled sadly at John, ignoring the heartless Hembrow, and standing in the doorway watched them descend the gloomy stairs. In the hall they passed a tall, florid man in a cloak and opera-hat who had just come in—Pandora's escort to the ball, no doubt.

John Christmas offered to accompany Hembrow back to Scotland Yard, and in the taxi he told him of the interview he had had with Gilbert Cold, and the queer story of the sealed envelope left in that gentleman's care and sent to Mrs. Rudgwick. Hembrow listened carefully, and when John came to the story of the apparently purposeless burglary at Camperdown Terrace, the bright snap of his deepset eyes and the abruptness of his voice showed his excitement. He leant immediately out of the window and gave the driver instructions to drive him to 9 Camperdown Terrace.

“This is a clue that must be followed up immediately,” he said. “For it certainly looks as if somebody else besides Mrs. Rudgwick had an interest in that sealed envelope. And if we can lay our hands on the burglar we shall probably find ourselves not far from the murderer. I meant to go home and work out a little problem that has occurred to me, but it looks as if I shall be out late to-night, after all.”

“Wish I could come with you,” said John regretfully. “But I promised to spend the evening with some friends. I wonder if Serafine would let me off.”

“Is that the Miss Wimpole who was at Madox Court last night? I heard you call her Serafine. If so, you might be better employed if you kept your promise than if you came with me.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed John with a laugh. “You're not beginning to suspect Miss Wimpole, are you?”

“Oh, no,” said the Inspector, smiling. “But there's sure to be a good deal of talk about the murder during the evening, and you might find an idea present itself to you, especially if some of the guests of last night are there.”

“Newtree will be,” said John meditatively, “and Sir Marion Steen, and Mordby, no doubt. Yes, perhaps you're right, Hembrow. I expect they'll each have a different theory about the criminal, each one more farfetched than the last. By the way, Hembrow, Miss Shirley's evidence seemed to corroborate what Gilbert Cold said about Frew having been a married man. Queer, if he has a wife, that she hasn't put in an appearance. But of course she may be abroad, or even dead.”

“Possibly,” said Hembrow quietly, “but I don't think so. And I think we may find that her silence is not so queer after all. I may as well tell you, Mr. Christmas, that I have positive proof that there was a woman in the deceased's flat last night before he died.”

“This is something new, Inspector! What's led you to that conclusion?”

“Well,” explained Hembrow, “to begin with, there's this handkerchief, marked with a P—”

“But,” interrupted John in some surprise, “is there any reason to think it isn't Pandora Shirley's? She admitted herself that it might be hers.”

“But she denied having entered the flat last night. When I found this handkerchief, on first entering the dining-room, it was soaking wet, as if somebody had been crying into it quite lately. Now I wouldn't trust too much to Miss Shirley's truthfulness, and she may have been lying when she said she never entered the flat. But we have a witness to the fact that she was only in Madox Court 
about ten minutes altogether, and also to the fact that she was quite cheerful both when she entered and when she left. It's rather too much to believe that the girl burst into tears, cried long enough to soak a handkerchief, recovered her good spirits completely and removed every trace of tears in ten minutes. But the handkerchief, of course, is not proof in itself.”

“Go on, Hembrow,” said John as the Inspector paused. “Don't keep me in suspense. This is extremely interesting, though it looks as if it were going to complicate matters considerably.”

“I don't know about that, Mr. Christmas. Rather the reverse, I fancy. Early this morning I examined the earth and gravel round the block of buildings in Madox Court. I found a woman's foot-prints in the passage that runs along the back of the flats—where you had your little tussle with young Greenaway. They were made by a thin, high-heeled pair of shoes, size four, and they led only one way, towards the road. There are no women servants employed in the block, and no women living there. Pandora Shirley takes size six in shoes. The foot-prints did not lead all the way from the back door to the road, but started suddenly in the middle of the passage, as if their owner had dropped out of heaven. And,” said Hembrow impressively, taking out a pocket-book, “I found this clinging to the corrugated iron of the outhouse roof under Mr. Frew's studio window.”

Carefully Hembrow removed from the book a small shred of fuchsia-coloured silk. Christmas stared at it, fascinated. As he looked at the grimly-incriminating slip of silk he seemed to see the phantom of a small pale woman in a brilliant fuchsia gown; and for a moment his instinctive pity for any woman tied against her will to a man like Gordon Frew protested against the ruthless work he was engaged upon. Then his interest in the case as a case reasserted itself.

“Have you followed up this clue at all, Inspector? Did anybody see the woman, I wonder, in Hurst Road or elsewhere?”

Hembrow shook his head.

“So far, all the inquiries we've made have drawn blank. She seems to have simply vanished into the fog. The murderer, whoever he or she may be, has a lot to thank that fog for. So far all we know is that a small woman wearing a red dress, scarf or shawl climbed out of Frew's studio window last night and escaped along the passage-way into the street. I shall lose no time in following up her trail, but meanwhile I think this burglary at Camperdown Terrace calls for more immediate attention. Why didn't the fool of a man call in the police this morning? Probably every clue to the identity of the burglar is destroyed by now!”

“She must have been a very athletic woman,” said John thoughtfully, “and a brave one, too, to drop from the window on to that outhouse roof. It's a wonder she didn't break her neck, especially if she was a short woman, as her size in shoes seems to indicate. Why, it was quite a feat for me! I shouldn't have cared to do it in cold blood, and I stand six foot two. When I was hanging on to the sill by my finger-nails my toes were still inches off the roof, and it's a sloping one. I don't see how she could have done it. Even if she managed not to injure herself, the drop on to that galvanized iron must have made the devil of a noise! Yet nobody heard anything.”

Hembrow looked at his friend with a sidelong, rather sorry look.

“I think I've got the explanation of that, Mr. Christmas, though I'm afraid it's one you won't like. I'll keep it to myself for the present.... This the place? H'm! Certainly doesn't look very enticing to an ordinary thief! Do you want the taxi, Mr. Christmas? I shan't keep it.”

John wished his friend good luck, and sat watching in the taxi until the door of 9a opened and closed behind Inspector Hembrow. Then he gave the driver Serafine's address and drove off. He wished very much that he could go home to his flat and think over the events of the day in solitude. He felt not at all in the mood for light conversation.

There was the usual lively crowd at Serafine's little house on Hampstead Heath, the usual roar of conversation on the usual subjects. Laurence Newtree, persuaded much against his will by John, was there, and Simon Mordby and little Sir Marion Steen. Imogen Wimpole, implored by Serafine not to turn the evening into a post-mortem by recounting the previous night's adventures, was mystifying her guests by hints and veiled allusions to terrible experiences which had robbed her of her night's sleep and made her really unfit to perform the duties of a hostess properly. She looked, however, her usual beautiful, large, eupeptic self. Serafine, John thought, seemed to have suffered most from the shock. For one so energetic, she seemed a little lifeless and absent-minded, rousing herself occasionally to her usual argumentative brilliance and then dropping back into platitudes or silence. She looked pale and careworn and confided to John that she wished very much her guests would all go.

“My dear, what's the matter with you? I thought you were your happiest in a crowd?”

“So I am, as a rule. I don't know. I feel morbid.”

“Last night?”

“I suppose so. But it's worse than that. I feel as if I were waiting for something too horrible to happen.”

John smiled.

“Don't tell me you're the criminal.”

“I couldn't feel more jumpy if I were,” said Serafine with a tired grin. “Here's that fool Mordby. Stay and keep him off me, for heaven's sake!”

“Ah, Christmas!” Mordby came up behind John with his soft, secretive tread and took his hand in a soft, boneless clasp. “Why, you're looking worn-out, man!” He dropped his voice. “How do you find the trail?”

“Distinctly long and winding,” replied John flippantly, wishing the doctor would not stare gravely and intently into his eyes as if he were reading the symptoms of a serious complex, inhibition or what-not. However, it was no use wishing, for that wide, vague yet earnest stare was part of Mordby's stock-in-trade. Patients like Imogen Wimpole liked to think that those wide grey eyes could see into their inmost souls and save them the trouble of explaining themselves. Privately, John diagnosed myopia and guessed that even the earthly garment of the soul was more than a little blurred to that searching gaze.

“I understand,” went on the psychologist in confidentially lowered tones, “that the detection of crime is a hobby of yours. I also find crime and the criminal a most interesting study, though I prefer to study them from the arm-chair, as they say, rather than at first hand. Now—” He moved a little closer to John, and John, who heartily and instinctively disliked him, had to repress a discourteous impulse to move abruptly back, “I wonder—have you formed any theory as to the murderer?”

Christmas smiled at this bald question.

“A hundred,” he replied amiably. “All equally interesting, all equally unlikely to coincide with the facts.”

“Ah!” said Mordby, shaking his large head. “Of course you won't tell me. But I ventured to wonder whether I mightn't be of some service to you, in a purely unofficial way. I suppose I may say, without vanity, that I know as much about abnormal psychology as any man in England. And I've often thought that such a knowledge, helping one as it does to recognize the potential murderer practically at sight, would be invaluable to a student of crime, like yourself.”

“The difficulty is,” said Christmas gravely, “that, to quote your own words, Dr. Mordby, we are all potential murderers.”

“Yes, yes,” said the doctor eagerly. “That is so. But only the student of psychology can gauge the—ah! breaking-point of a given individual with anything like accuracy. I suppose this is hardly the time and place to discuss such a matter....” He looked regretfully towards the door as if he would have liked to lead John off to some more private place. “But I hope to have an opportunity of a talk with you soon. I may say that I have formed a certain opinion, and I shall be interested to see whether events bear me out.”

“Indeed!” Serafine, who had so far made a silent third in the group, suddenly joined in. A little surprised at her incisive tone, John glanced at her and saw that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unusually hard and bright. “Won't you give us your opinion, Dr. Mordby, and let us share the interest?”

Mordby put his head on one side and disclosed a row of even white teeth and one gold one in a whimsical, consciously charming smile.

“I hardly feel that such a gruesome subject of discussion is appropriate to these charming surroundings.”

“What does it matter?” said Serafine, still in that hard, light tone. “It isn't a personal affair. The murderer, whoever he may be, isn't a friend of ours. Why not discuss him?”

She laughed. John, who knew her so well, could not understand her in this mood.

“I hope you don't think I did it, Dr. Mordby,” she went on flippantly. “In that case, I would much rather you kept your theory to yourself. I don't want to have John sleuthing me all over London. It would quite spoil our old friendship.”

“My dear Miss Wimpole,” replied Mordby, smiling, “as I told you last night, your potentiality for murder, or in fact any violent act, is extremely low. I can hardly imagine the circumstances in which so well co-ordinated a mind as yours would reach breaking-point.”