The Studio Crime (28 page)

“But he
did
, sir! I saw it quite plain.”

“No, that 'e didn't!” maintained the old man, wagging his head. “And I can swear to that, foggy night or no foggy night, sir. Cos why? Cos when I spoke to 'im and 'e turned round sort of gibbering with fright, as if the bogey-man was after 'im, 'e gave a kind of silly grin when 'e saw it was only me, an' I noticed as 'is false teeth 'ad come a bit loose, sir. I should say all 'is top teeth was on a plate, by the look of it, an' 'ad come loose in 'is excitement, sir. Cos you could see the top part that wasn't meant to show. An' I laughed to meself, and thanked Gawd I'd managed to keep me own teeth in me 'ead all these years.”

“That can't be right,” protested old Greenaway plaintively, looking at their ragged informant with extreme disfavour. “I saw distinctly, sir, that the man had a beautiful even row of teeth and that one of them was crowned with gold.”

“Beautiful teeth, all right,” assented the crossing-sweeper with a grin. “Beautiful as the dentist makes 'em. But white as tomb-stones, every one of 'em. Thank
you
, sir.”

“Oh, and just one more thing,” said John as they were about to pass on. “Did you notice anybody else pass this way at about the same time as our friend in the fez?”

“Same time, sir? No, I didn't notice anybody passing at the same time, but then I was too ockerpied tellin' the gentleman the way to a place 'e didn't want to go to, to notice anything else, sir. A little while before 'e came shootin' in 'ere, there was a tall gentleman passed, with a walkin'-stick and a white muffler, sir. And soon after 'Is Nibs of 'Anwell 'ad gone off there come a shortish gentleman in a nopera 'at, nippin' along like a little cock sparrer, sir. An' that was all I see, cos I put up the shutters, as they say, soon after that, sir.”

“That can't be right, Mr. Christmas, sir,” repeated Greenaway when they had taken leave of the old model. He looked rather distressed that John should appear to place any reliance on what such an old ragamuffin had to say. “I mean, that about the gentleman's teeth, sir. It can't be right.”

“It may be, you know, Greenaway,” said John cheerily.

“But think, sir, what it would mean!” urged the old man with respectful earnestness. “The gentleman you took me to see to-day 'ad a gold tooth, sir, but I feel almost certain 'e isn't the right gentleman. If we're to believe this person, that means there must 'ave been
three
gentlemen in fezes mixed up in Mr. Frew's death, sir. It don't sound likely or reasonable somehow, do you think, sir?”

John laughed.

“It certainly doesn't, Greenaway. I should fix the likely and reasonable number of gentlemen in fezes at two, at the most.”

When John returned to Madox Court with Greenaway he found that Serafine had departed. Laurence was standing in front of his drawing-table surveying with a rather discontented expression the drawings of that lady's head which covered a large sheet of Whatman paper.

“Not bad, Laurence,” commented John, looking over his shoulder. “Serafine pensive, Serafine cheerful, Serafine melancholy, Serafine enraged. By the way, I hope you are feeling chastened by the opinion she expressed of your intellectual capacities!”

Thoughtfully correcting a line in one of the drawings, Laurence replied rather indistinctly that he liked a woman who said what she thought.

“Oh, you do, do you?” said John with some amusement, and was about to comment on this volte-face when there was a loud, urgent rapping on the studio door, and to the surprise of both John and Laurence, Dr. Mordby burst into the room. He looked pale and haggard, and his urbane, professional manner had completely deserted him.

“Oh, there you are, Christmas!” he said abruptly, without so much as glancing at his host. “I rang you up at your flat and they told me you might possibly be here!”

“What is it, Dr. Mordby?” asked John, looking curiously at the unusual spectacle of the suave psychologist in a state of extreme agitation, and offering him a chair. Mordby sank into it with a sigh, but immediately, as though he found inaction impossible, rose to his feet again and paced restlessly across the room.

“Do you know the truth about this murder?” he inquired in a high, excited voice. “For God's sake put my mind at rest! Have you seen this?”

With a shaking hand he took a folded newspaper from his pocket and, unfolding it, flung rather than handed it to John.

“In the stop press news,” he uttered brokenly, and watched John's face avidly as he read the item.

STUDIO CRIME. MAN AND WOMAN ARRESTED

“A man and a woman have been arrested at Liverpool Docks in connection with the murder of Gordon Frew in St. John's Wood on November 24.”

“Good Lord!”, exclaimed Laurence, who had been reading over John's shoulder. “This can't mean that Merewether—” 

“I was expecting this,” said John quietly, folding the paper and dropping it on the floor.

“But you can't mean, John,” protested Laurence, “that you think Merewether—”

“Oh, Merewether!” interrupted Dr. Mordby violently. “Damn Merewether! Damn him eternally! What do I care for Merewether? Let him hang! But she—”

Laurence stared at the doctor in amazement. With his fists clenched and his eyes staring, he looked as though he were on the verge of insanity.

“But she—” went on Mordby more quietly, addressing John. “The woman they mention—
she
had nothing to do with it. It's impossible! For God's sake tell me what you know, Christmas! I feel as though I were going mad! What possible connection can she have had with Frew? And to think that I—”

He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands.

“She was his wife,” said Christmas quietly. “Laurence, fetch Dr. Mordby a brandy and soda.”

“His wife!” echoed Mordby, staring at Christmas as if he were a ghost. “But—”

“And it is the police theory that she is the murderer,” went on John.

Mordby looked at him wildly.

“Then I am Judas,” he said in a queer, strained voice.

There was a silence.

“Come, Dr. Mordby,” said John at last, evenly. “Hadn't you better tell us all about it? And quickly, because I must get down to Fleet Street before six o'clock.”

The doctor looked vacantly about him.

“What's the use? It is too late! And it was I—I who betrayed her!”

“You need not worry about that, Dr. Mordby,” said John in a matter-of-fact voice. “I do not think any action you may have taken can have made much difference to the course of events. But it would be as well perhaps if you would give me the facts in your possession. I may say that I do not believe for an instant that Mrs. Frew is guilty of the murder.”

A faint gleam of hope appeared in Mordby's eyes. He grasped the glass Laurence held out to him and took a gulp from it.

“God grant you may be right!” he said unevenly, with a queer theatricality that yet did not seem inappropriate to his character and to the occasion. “If—if she is convicted I shall never have another moment's peace of mind! If I had guessed for a moment that she was under suspicion I should have let her go, even though it meant letting Merewether go too. Damn him!”

“You had better tell me all you know about Phyllis Frew,” suggested John quietly. “And as quickly as possible, Dr. Mordby, if you please. She was before her marriage Miss Phyllis Templar, was she not, and a medical student at University College at the same time as you and Dr. Merewether?''

“Yes, but—”

“At that time she was the cause of a bitter rivalry between you and Merewether. But she left the University without completing the course or taking a degree and went to live in France, did she not?”

“Yes,” replied Mordby, looking at John with a puzzled stare. “But how do you know all this? I remember that I told you of an old rivalry between myself and Merewether. But I did not mention her name, and I did not even know that she had become the wife of Gordon Frew, nor that she was in England, nor—”

“That does not matter just now, Dr. Mordby. To identify the lady you spoke of as the wife of Gordon Frew did not require any very elaborate deduction. Will you carry the story on from where I left off, please?”

“She went to live in France,” said Dr. Mordby, sitting upright in his chair and speaking more calmly than before, as if he had become infected with John's matter-of-fact briskness. “And for a year or two I neither saw nor heard of her. But I could not forget her at once. She—she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. There is no one like her, even now. I believe she corresponded with Merewether for a while after she went to France,” went on the doctor, arid added with a sort of stony bitterness: “He was more favoured than I. Two or three years after she left England I took my degree and went for a short rest and holiday to the south of France. I did not go to seek her out, it was pure chance that took me to the town where she lived with her father. For by that time I was more or less cured of my—unfortunate attachment, though it had made so much impression on me that no other had come to take its place. I saw her again, Christmas, and in an instant it was as if the three years interval had never been. I was as madly in love with her as ever. It was a strange obsession,” said the doctor meditatively, the psychologist in him rising for a moment above the man, “for there had never been any real friendship between us, and we had not a taste nor an ideal in common. She had always, in fact, disliked me, and made no secret of her aversion. It was a kind of possession, like witchcraft. She is a woman to make one believe in the legend of Helen of Troy. For although I fancied many years ago that the affair had at last become no more than a sentimental memory, yet when I saw her by chance in Hampstead this morning the old magic came back like a dream, although she had lost all her brilliance and a great deal of the beauty she had.

“But to go on with my story. I discovered that she was living quietly in the south of France with her father, to whom she was much attached. And I found out, never mind how, it is not material to the story, that her father was a discharged convict who had taken another name and settled down in this small country town to start a new life as an honest and respected man. His real name was Michael Templar, but to his neighbours he was known as Martin Hilary, and his daughter had dropped her surname and become Phyllis Hilary. Well, I tried to use this knowledge to force the girl to consent to becoming my wife, God forgive me! I threatened to make Templar's discreditable past known to all the people who knew him and respected him as Michael Hilary. I think she would have consented in the end, rather than allow her father's peace to be wrecked, for he had come out of prison a broken wreck of a man, and his hold on life and sanity was not very strong. But I came to myself in time, and realized what it was that I was contemplating. I am not really a villain, although I so nearly behaved like one. I left France immediately, putting temptation behind me, and after travelling round Europe for a while, decided to remain in Vienna to study, and to abandon surgery for psychopathy. In the course of time I came to England and started a practice which has, I think I may say, been not unsuccessful.”

Christmas repressed a smile. It was amusing to hear the familiar Mordby emerging, under the spell of his own eloquence, from the agitated, hardly-recognizable human being who had begun to recount this story.

“Since then,” went on Simon Mordby, “I had not seen Phyllis Templar until this morning. And in the course of years I had completely recovered from the affair, although to this day I cannot see her Christian name written nor hear it addressed to another woman without the stirring of painful memories. But my old dislike of my rival dies harder than die love which caused the rivalry—a not uncommon phenomenon in such affairs, I am afraid. Dr. Merewether and I would in any case have been antipathetic to one another, I think. With the memory of our hatred between us—and the hatred of youth can be very bitter, as no doubt you know—friendship, or even tolerance, between us has been impossible. You see, I am frank with you, Christmas.

“When I saw Phyllis Templar by chance in Hampstead High Street this morning in company with Miss Serafine Wimpole, the ghost of the old fascination returned to me. But no more than the ghost. Ten years is a long time. However, my curiosity overcame me so far that I attempted to follow the cab they got into and discover their destination. But I was not able to follow them far, owing to Miss Wimpole's ingenuity.” Mordby gave the shadow of a grim smile. “I inquired later at the taxi-rank in Hampstead and the man who had driven them was fairly easily persuaded to part with the information that he had driven them to a certain address in Swiss Cottage—an address which I knew to be Merewether's. The old demon of jealousy was upon me in an instant. It seemed monstrous that, while this woman whom we had both loved should fly from me in the street as though I were the plague, she should trust herself to a man whom I knew to be a murderer.”

“You knew nothing of the kind, Dr. Mordby,” interrupted John. “However, that is beside the point.”

Mordby looked up in astonishment.

“My dear Christmas, I had the best reasons for supposing what I take to be the fact, that Merewether is responsible for the death of Gordon Frew.”

“To suppose,” replied Christmas, “is not to know. And I think you will find that you were mistaken in your supposition.”

“But do you mean to tell me,” exclaimed Mordby in astonishment, “that Merewether has been wrongfully arrested?”

“Just as Mrs. Frew has been wrongfully arrested, yes, I think so. I was hoping that Hembrow would not make the arrest until I had had time to complete my case, but of course Merewether's flight made an arrest inevitable.”