The Studio Crime (31 page)

“I thought,” remarked Laurence thoughtfully, “that Sir Marion seemed very silent and unenthusiastic when you showed him that photograph yesterday evening.”

“I suppose,” said Hembrow, who had been thinking hard, “that he went into Shipman's Mews for the purpose of removing his make-up. He can't have had much on, by the way, to be able to remove it so quickly.”

“False eyebrows, a false moustache, a fez and a little bronze powder will do wonders in a fog,” said John.

“Yes, I have no doubt that was why he dashed into the mews as though the devil was after him, to use my friend the crossing-sweeper's own words. Startled at being spoken to, he then asked the crossing-sweeper to tell him the way to the first place that came into his head, to account for his apparent benightedness, and went on quickly along the road to the passage that leads into the recreation ground. Sheltering there, he removed his make-up, took off the fez and put it in his pocket, put on the opera-hat he had been carrying under his coat, and hurried along the road to overtake Merewether. By the way, he made a bad slip when he told you that he had met the mysterious stranger just
this
side of Shipman's Mews. He overlooked the little episode with the crossing-sweeper when he said that. For the sweeper saw Sir Marion Steen pass the mews a little while after the excitable stranger in the fez had passed on.”

There was a pause.

“I should like to know,” said Laurence at last, “what there was between Frew and Steen. I didn't know they even knew one another.”

“I fancy they knew one another only too well,” said John, “and that there was a good deal between them which Sir Marion would willingly have forgotten, but which Gordon Frew, in his jealousy and hatred, was determined to keep alive. You remember, Hembrow, that the delightful Mrs. Rudgwick told us that Gordon Frew had followed his elder brother to America, and that there had always been dislike and jealousy between the two? By the way, in my opinion that woman is an excellent judge of character. I thought her remarks on the characters and potentialities of her brothers most interesting and instructive.”

“Well?” asked Laurence, as John paused.

“I have no doubt in my own mind,” said John, “that James Frew and Sir Marion Steen were one and the same person. And I'm inclined to stretch the personality to include Frew's quondam business associate Henry Winter, who managed to escape the penalty of the law while Frew himself paid it in full.”

“But Henry Winter died,” objected Hembrow. “At least—”

“Your New York confrères didn't seem very positive on that point,” returned John. “All they knew positively was that he had disappeared. And I find that Henry Winter's disappearance from America's too-hospitable shore preceded by little less than a year the setting-up of the small hardware shop in an East Anglian town which formed Sir Marion's first stepping-stone to fortune. I've been looking him up in
Who's Who
. He's rather proud of that hardware shop, but I think he should have suppressed the date of its opening. However, I suppose when he made that entry he thought the past was safely buried, and his brother safely down-and-out. He did not allow for the fact that his brother's business acumen and determination to cut a figure in the world were equal to his own. He did not think that his brother's affection for him wag not likely to be increased during seven years' penal servitude. Ah!” said John with a sigh, “what a terrible thing the competitive spirit is! When it appears as jealousy, I think it is the worst thing in the world. They each had what they wanted. Why couldn't they have left one another alone?”

There was a long pause. Then Hembrow got to his feet briskly.

“Well, it's all wrong, you know, Mr. Christmas,” he observed with a smile. “Your methods, I mean. It looks more like lucky guess-work than anything else to me.”

“I admit,” said John, “that I am capable of building a very high edifice on a small foundation of proved fact. But the observation of character isn't guess-work, although by its very nature it isn't capable of what you would call proof. I knew as soon as I saw his studio that Gordon Frew was a vain man. And with that kind of vanity jealousy goes hand in hand. Besides, you will remember that there was a book on the libel laws among the sumptuously-bound and scrupulously uncut art-books on Frew's shelves. And that he was in communication with the Herald's Office when he died.”

“I wonder,” said Laurence pensively, “what name he was thinking of taking. I suppose we shall never know.”

“I have no doubt in my own mind,” replied John, “though, of course, Inspector, I haven't a shadow of proof, that it was Steen. You will remember that it was at Frew's suggestion that his charming sister changed her name. And I don't imagine that the name Steen was chosen for that disreputable shop-front entirely by chance. It was all, I imagine, part of the amiable Frew's scheme for the persecution of his brother.”

“There's one small thing that puzzles me,” said Hembrow thoughtfully, “though it's not important. What was that the girl Shirley overheard about ‘a coffin for one'? It sounds as if it ought to have had some bearing on the murder, but I'm blowed if I can see what, unless Frew was threatening Sir Marion.”

“Not exactly, I think,” responded John with a smile. “I fancy that the words she overheard were not ‘a coffin for one,' but ‘coffee for one.' You remember that Frew's own thumb-print was found on the knife that killed him, running at an angle towards the handle, as though he had held the weapon with the point towards himself? Well, my idea is that at some point in the argument with his visitor Frew took the knife down from where it was hanging on the wall and held it out to the other man, saying with a sort of grim jocularity: ‘Daggers for two and coffee for one!'”

“Yes,” said Laurence. “It's just the sort of thing he would have said. I've heard him use that little epigram in conversation more than once.”

“Yes, I suppose that's the explanation,” assented Hembrow. “For Frew's next remark was that ‘he thought it would save argument,' which fits in perfectly. Well, I'll be off, Mr. Christmas. Lord, what a morning! I must say that in one way I'm not sorry to find I've arrested the wrong man. For Dr. Merewether seems a very likeable gentleman, though he hasn't got much to say. What beats me is why he behaved in such a suspicious way all through, seeing that he's perfectly innocent!”

“I think,” said Christmas, “that the explanation lies in Mrs. Frew's present state of mind. And I have no doubt that once she is released Dr. Merewether will be quite willing to enlighten you as to the motives for his suspicious behaviour.”

One afternoon a week or so later Serafine Wimpole, entering her house in the company of John Christmas after a private view of some new artist's works, found Dr. Merewether descending the stairs from her Aunt Imogen's bedroom. Imogen, who was suffering from a bad cold in the head, had abandoned psycho-analysis for the homely ministrations of a general practitioner, and was at the moment lying in bed much soothed by the doctor's assurance that the cold she was suffering from bore no resemblance to the latest epidemic, Russian influenza.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Merewether,” said Serafine. “How do you find my aunt?”

“She has a nasty cold,” replied the doctor, “but that is all. Her temperature is quite normal. She will be all right after a day in bed.”

He took up his hat and coat, and hesitated, looking from Serafine to Christmas. Then, laying these garments down again, he said with the grave formality that was characteristic of him:

“I feel that I have never thanked you as I should have done, Miss Wimpole, for your kindness to Phyllis on that—that dreadful day. I do so now.”

Serafine smiled at his serious face, and hesitated, and then said, greatly daring:

“I should so like to know, Dr. Merewether, what happened on the night Mr. Frew was killed. Why did you give us all such a dreadful three days? Will you tell me?”

“Certainly,” said Merewether, with his slight grave smile, and followed Serafine and John into the sitting-room.

“I expect,” he said quietly after a moment, “you know, or can guess, at the early part of Phyllis's history and mine. We were fellow-students, and—and we became engaged to be married, although we had the prospect of a very long engagement in front of us. After we had been engaged a few months, she left the college and went to live in France with her father.”

Merewether hesitated and glanced at John.

“I expect you know her father's history, and that he is a discharged convict, although his conviction and imprisonment in America took place many years ago. When he changed his name and settled down in a small town in the south of France to start a new life, Phyllis thought it her duty to stand by him. And she soon became very much attached to him.” The doctor sighed. “So much so that in the end she broke off our engagement and consented to marry Gordon Frew rather than allow him to make her father's past known to the people who liked and respected him. He was—still is—a weak and nervous man, and I think she feared the shock would kill him. She allowed herself to be blackmailed into marrying a scoundrel. I'll pass over all that time. I did not at the time know her reasons for breaking off our engagement. I suffered a good deal, but not so much as I should have if I had not had the consolation of thinking that she was happy with the man she had chosen. She married Gordon Frew, and I did not see her again for many years.”

The doctor paused a moment, looking with unseeing eyes out of the window.

“I had not met Frew,” he went on, “and it was not until I was called in to attend him during an attack of influenza last April, that I realized what kind of man it was my poor girl had married. I realized, too, why she had married him. For Frew, who knew me well enough by name and had often taunted Phyllis with her former attachment to me, took care to tell me how it was that she had come to marry him.”

The doctor paused and looked from Serafine to John.

“You thought for a while, Miss Wimpole, did you not, that I was guilty of the murder of Gordon Frew? I can tell you that last April I came near to murdering him. However,” he sighed and half-smiled, “I didn't do it. I even prevented him from dying, though there was murder in my heart. A few days before he—died, I met Phyllis in the street. It was the first time I had seen her since her marriage, but for me the years were as though they had never been. I implored her to leave the scoundrel she had married. She told me that, although he left her so far in peace as to allow her to live with her father, he would not consent to a divorce. And that she dared not divorce him while he held the secret of her father's past over him like a threat. He had even told her that he had papers proving her father's complicity in other crimes than the one for which he had been imprisoned. I guessed that it was a lie, but the poor girl believed him, and believed him when he said that the envelope containing these papers was in the possession of a third person, whose name and address he gave her. I think he hoped that she would amuse him by involving herself in desperate efforts to get hold of the papers which, I am inclined to believe, never existed.”

“There was an envelope,” interrupted John, “but there was nothing inside it. It was a cruel practical joke.”

“Well,” went on the doctor with a sigh, “she would not listen to my reasoning and pleading. She was obsessed with the idea that Frew could, if he chose, ruin her father's life. She told me that she would at least make one more attempt to persuade him to give up the papers and leave her and her father in peace.”

Merewether paused a while, as if collecting his thoughts.

“And so,” he said, “we come to the evening of November 24, the night on which Frew was murdered. I knew that Phyllis intended to visit her husband that evening and make her last appeal to the better feelings which he did not possess. I had tried to dissuade her, but it had been no use. You can imagine my anxiety, therefore, when we heard a sound like a cry coming from the room overhead. I imagined—well, the anxiety I felt at hearing that cry need not be described. I ran upstairs to inquire of Frew whether all was well with her. I knocked at the door and could get no answer. There was silence in the studio. I was terribly alarmed. I looked through the key-hole, and could see Phyllis standing rigid in the centre of the room with her hands clenched at her sides and an expression of horror on her face. Still there was no sound, and my fears for her safety began to change into a suspicion equally dreadful. I remembered her overwrought and nervous manner, and the excitability she had shown when I had attempted to reason with her. I called softly to her to let me in. She recognized my voice, and after a moment opened the door. You know what I saw. And you can guess what I imagined. Phyllis would say nothing. Her face was quite white and there was blood upon her bare arm. I wiped it off on my handkerchief and implored her to tell me what had happened. But her reason seemed to have deserted her. She would only say, again and again: ‘He's dead!' and ‘Nobody must see, nobody must see!' in that dreadful, vacant, earnest voice...”

Merewether shuddered and stopped abruptly for a moment.

“She took the key and put it in the lock, muttering that nobody must see, and then prepared to open the door and go downstairs. She seemed dazed, like a sleep-walker. I told her that she could not go out that way, and flinging up the window, saw that it would be possible to help her to escape. I gave her my address and told her to go straight to my house. I do not know how I imagined I was going to hide her from the police, I had no idea at the moment but to help her escape... The rest you know.”

There was a long pause. Merewether lay back in his chair with a sigh, as if the memory of that night were too much for him.