Waiting for Orders (9 page)

The circumstances were indeed exceptional. It looked as though a murderer were going to escape the consequences of his crime and as if there were nothing that Scotland Yard could do about it.

In 1933 the wife of Mr Thomas Jones, an industrial chemist living in a Midland town, had died in her bath from carbon-monoxide poisoning. At the inquest her death had been found to be due to a defective geyser. Three months previously Mr Jones had insured her life for £5000; but although the police reviewed the possibility of his having engineered the defect in the geyser, no proof of his having done so had been forthcoming. A verdict of ‘Accidental Death’ had been returned.

In 1935 Mr Jones had married again. His second wife had been fifteen years his senior. It had been, no doubt, the £15,000 which the second Mrs Jones had inherited from her mother that had bridged the difference in their ages. But Mr Jones was, it seemed, unlucky in love. Eighteen months after their marriage the second Mrs Jones had died; and, strange to relate, from carbon-monoxide poisoning. She had been found in her car, which had been inside the garage with the engine running. According to the hapless Mr Jones, his wife had been subject to fainting fits. Evidently she had driven the car into the garage, felt faint, and remained in the driving-seat. There had been a strong wind and no doubt the garage doors had blown to,
leaving her at the mercy of the exhaust fumes. The fact that a small quantity of veronal had been found in her stomach had, to the irritation of the police, been accounted for by her doctor, who had said that she had been in the habit of taking sleeping draughts. A verdict of ‘Accidental Death’ had been returned.

In 1938 Mr Jones, now of independent means, had married yet again. His third wife’s name had been Rose, and she had had an income of £1200 a year from freehold house property left to her by her father. The week before the inquest which Mercer was now attending Mrs Jones had died-from carbon-monoxide poisoning.

The couple had lived in a block of expensive service flats. According to a preternaturally lugubrious Mr Jones, he had been at his golf club on the afternoon of ‘the tragedy’ and had returned home at about six o’clock to find the flat full of coal-gas and his wife dead in her bed. The gas-fire in the bedroom had been turned full on. His wife, he said, had been of a ‘sunny’ disposition, and he could think of no reason why she should have ‘taken her life’. In his opinion, propounded at length to the police inspector, she had been getting into bed for her afternoon nap, had caught the hem of her housecoat on the tap, and in freeing it had unwittingly turned the tap on. The fumes – here Mr Jones had exercised visible restraint over his emotions – had overcome her while she had been asleep.

Mercer listened to the evidence gloomily. With the facts about Mr Jones’s earlier matrimonial adventures in mind, Mercer had no doubt that Rose Jones had been murdered. The difficulty was to prove it. The law, very rightly, prohibited any mention of the fate of Mr Jones’s first two wives while the fate of the third was still
sub judice.
No doubt Mr Jones was aware of that. Mercer saw that the man was making an excellent impression on the jury. A demure figure in deep mourning, he was giving his evidence with sublime disregard of the implications contained in the questions being put to him.

Yes, he had given instructions for the gas-fire to be installed. No, it had been at his wife’s request that he had done so. No, it was not strange that she should need a gas-fire in a centrally heated room. She had felt the cold. Yes, it was the only gas-fire in the flat. There was a portable electric radiator in another room, but his wife had not liked it in the bedroom.

No, it was not strange that he had insisted upon an old-type gas-fire instead of the new type with the tap built into the fire. His wife had expressed a preference for the former. He was sorry now that he had not insisted upon the new type. The accident could not then have happened.

He had left his wife at two thirty to go to his golf club, ten minutes’ walk away. No, he had not gone straight there. He had gone first to a newsagent’s shop and bought a fashion magazine for his wife. He had then returned to the entrance lobby to the flats and asked the hall porter to take the magazine up to Mrs Jones. He had then gone on to the golf club.

No, he had not seen his wife alive after leaving the flat at two thirty. The hall porter must have been the last person to see her alive. As far as he could remember, he had arrived at the golf club at about three o’clock. But he couldn’t be certain. The secretary at the golf club would probably remember. He had met him soon after he had arrived.

Yes (this with a puzzled frown), there was a gas-meter in the flat. Yes, the main gas-tap was beside it. As far as he could remember, the meter was at the top of a cupboard just inside the door of the flat. Yes, he believed that he had suggested its installation there instead of in the kitchen. To have installed it in the kitchen would have meant loss of cupboard-space.

The jury, Mercer noted, were beginning to fidget. Clearly they did not see the point of this questioning. He scowled at them. The blockheads! They had been shown a plan of the flats. And didn’t they ever read their newspapers? Couldn’t they visualize the scene? Mr Jones turning the gas off at the main and then turning on the gas-fire in the bedroom; Mr Jones returning to the lobby with a magazine; the hall porter going up in the lift to deliver the magazine while Mr Jones ascended again by the stairs? Couldn’t they see Mr Jones waiting on the stairs while the hall porter descended again and his wife got into bed? Couldn’t they see Mr Jones quietly opening the door of the flat, reaching up to the cupboard, turning the main gas-tap on again, and quietly leaving? The hall porter had admitted that he didn’t watch the entrance all the time. Didn’t they see that Mr Jones could have done these things and got to his golf club in time to show himself to a doddering old fool of a secretary ‘soon after’ three? It must be obvious. ‘Blockheads!’ he muttered, and
heard Detective-Inspector Denton beside him stir in sympathy.

And then he saw Dr Czissar.

The refugee Czech detective was sitting in one of the seats reserved for the Press and as his brown, cow-like eyes met Mercer’s grey ones, he inclined his head respectfully.

Mercer nodded curtly and looked away. He heard Denton’s grunt of surprise and hoped that his subordinate would not find it necessary to comment on Dr Czissar’s presence at the inquest. The last person he wanted to think about at that moment was Dr Jan Czissar. Since the first day on which this pale, bespectacled Czech had walked into his office bearing an unfurled umbrella and a letter of introduction from a Home Office politician, Mercer had been nursing a badly wounded self-esteem. Twice had the wound been reopened. Three times in all had he had to listen to Dr Czissar demonstrating, with his infuriating lecture-room mannerisms, that Scotland Yard could be wrong while he, Dr Jan Czissar, ‘late Prague police’, was right.

Now, as he sat listening to a gas company official confirming Mr Jones’s account of the installation of the gas-fire, Mercer tried to put Dr Czissar out of his mind. But his mind, nagged by the memories of past humiliations, refused to part with Dr Czissar. It began to speculate as to why Dr Czissar was there at the inquest, what he was doing in the Press seats, and what he was thinking about the case. It was with a heartfelt sigh of relief that he heard the coroner’s announcement that the court would adjourn for the luncheon interval.

He stood up. ‘We might get a drink and a sandwich across the road, Denton.’

‘Right, Sir.’

They had gone about three paces before Nemesis, worming its way between a policeman and a stout member of the general public, overtook them.

‘Assistant-Commissioner Mercer, please,’ said Dr Czissar breathlessly, ‘Dr Jan Czissar. Late Prague police. At your service. I should like, if you please, to speak about this case.’ He bowed quickly to Denton.

Mercer gave him a rancid smile. ‘Ah, Dr Czissar! Are you working for the Press now, Doctor?’

Dr Czissar hesitated. ‘The Press? No, I am still working on my book on medical jurisprudence. Ah, I see. The seat. It was lent to me by a journalist with a Press card. But’ – he smiled shyly – ‘perhaps I should not say that, eh?’

Mercer grunted. The Doctor, his long, grey raincoat flapping about his legs, was now loping along beside them. Denton, who, with less dignity to lose than Mercer, thought Dr Czissar very clever indeed, would have liked to have discussed the case, but seeing Mercer’s face, kept silent.

‘I was very surprised,’ pursued Dr Czissar as they descended the steps to the street, ‘to see you in this court this morning, Assistant-Commissioner. It appeared such an unimportant case. But then, of course, I had not heard the evidence. I wish to compliment you, Assistant-Commissioner. It was so clever, I thought, the way in which the existence of the electric radiator was established. I was afraid for a time that the murderer’s trick was going to succeed. But I should have known better. It is a most interesting case.’

But Mercer had stopped dead. ‘What did you say about an electric radiator?’ he demanded.

Dr Czissar looked a little scared as he repeated the sentence.

‘May I remind you, Doctor,’ snapped Mercer, ‘that Mrs Jones was not burnt to death or electrocuted, but gassed?’

A puzzled look came over the Doctor’s face. ‘But I thought,’ he said hesitantly, ‘that you understood …’ He did not finish the sentence. The puzzled look on his face gave way to one of acute embarrassment. He drew himself up. ‘I beg your pardon, Assistant-Commissioner,’ he said formally. ‘I have made a mistake. If you will excuse me, please?’

At that moment something inside Mercer’s stomach seemed to drop about six inches, and in the fraction of a second which it took to do so, he realized that his humiliations at the hands of Dr Czissar were not ended; that the wound was to be opened yet again. There was nothing else for it. Dr Czissar had obviously understood something about the case that he had not understood. He, Mercer, must know what that something was before the inquest ended in a verdict of ‘Accidental Death’. And there was only one way of finding out. He steeled himself for the ordeal. Then:

‘I should very much like to discuss the case with you, Doctor,’ he said ceremoniously. ‘Inspector Denton and I were about to take a little refreshment. If you would care to accompany us …’

Three minutes later a thoroughly bewildered Dr Czissar was sitting with a whisky and soda and a ham sandwich in front of him. ‘It is most kind of you, Assistant-Commissioner,’ he was repeating over and over again. The brown eyes behind the thick pebble glasses were almost tearful.

‘Not at all.’ Mercer took a deep breath. ‘I have a confession to make to you, Doctor. We do not
know
that this is a case of murder. We only
believe
so. Jones has had three wives, of which this woman was the third. All have died apparently accidental deaths from carbon-monoxide poisoning. All three deaths have been of financial benefit to Jones. That is the basis of our belief that Jones is a murderer. But from the evidence at our disposal we are frankly unable to prove it. In our opinion, as you will have gathered from the questions asked this morning, Jones returned to the flat before he went to the golf club and turned on the main gas-tap so that the gas escaped into his wife’s room while she was asleep. All he would have to do before he went out would be to leave the fire tap on and the main tap off. But it is proof we need. Now, Doctor, you’ve helped us before. If you can help us again we shall be obliged.’

Dr Czissar’s pleasure was, Denton thought, pathetic. ‘Assistant-Commissioner Mercer,’ he said eagerly, ‘I am profoundly honoured by your confidence. It is a great joy to me to be able to help the nation which has shown such hospitality to me and others of my unhappy countrymen. I, too, will be frank. But for your presence in court I should have stopped to hear no more than the medical evidence. Now I will tell you this. If I had known what you have now told me about Mr Jones, I do not think that I should have understood this case. He is a very clever man. I will explain to you why.’

‘Please do,’ said Mercer drily.

A faint, thin smile stretched the Doctor’s full lips. He settled his spectacles on his nose. Then he cleared his throat, swallowed hard, and leaned forward. ‘Attention, please!’ he said sharply.

‘In the first place,’ said Dr Czissar, ‘I considered this story of
the gas-fire being turned on accidentally. I tried to think of it actually happening. There is a tap, and this lady has a long coat which catches in the tap, turning it on. So far it is possible. Improbable, as are all accidents, but possible. What happens now? According to Mr Jones’s evidence, the tap was turned full on when he returned to the flat and found his wife dead. Therefore we are asked to believe that while the lady was taking off her coat, getting into bed and going to sleep, the tap was all the time turned fully on. That, I thought, was not possible. Assistant-Commissioner, I will explain why.’

‘We’ll accept the proposition,’ put in Mercer hastily.

‘To begin with,’ persisted Dr Czissar, ‘a gas-fire turned full on and unlighted makes a little noise. But let us assume that this lady was a little deaf. There is now the
smell
of the gas to be considered. My own sense of smell is not particularly sensitive, but I can easily detect one part of coal-gas in seven hundred parts of air. Many persons – especially those who do not smoke – can detect by smell one part in ten thousand. Is it credible that this lady should be awake in a small room for several minutes with the gas-fire turned full on without smelling it? I think not!’

‘The accident, then, is impossible. And is not the police theory also impossible? Mr Jones leaves the flat at half past two. At two thirty-five he hands the magazine to the hall porter. He then has to go up the stairs and wait until the porter has gone and his wife is asleep. Let us assume that he knows his wife’s habits very well and that he can be sure when she will go to sleep. He will have to wait on the stairs at least twenty minutes. Then he has to leave the building and reach the golf club without being seen. The risk to him would have been enormous. He might have been seen on the stairs by one of the other tenants. I cannot believe that a man like Mr Jones would have taken such a risk.’