THE MURDER AT SEVEN KINGS
“This is Mrs. Chugg, sir,” said Mr. Marigold, “the charwoman who found
the body!”
The Chief and Desmond stood at the detective’s side in the Mackwaytes’
little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a
litter of paper, empty bottles, overturned cruets and other _débris_ on
the floor, evidence of the thoroughness with which the burglar had
overhauled the cheap fumed oak sideboard which stood against the wall
with doors and drawers open. In the corner, the little roll-top desk
showed a great gash in the wood round the lock where it had been
forced. The remains of a meal still stood on the table.
Mrs. Chugg, a diminutive, white-haired, bespectacled woman in a rusty
black cape and skirt, was enthroned in the midst of this scene of
desolation. She sat in an armchair by the fire, her hands in her lap,
obviously supremely content with the position of importance she
enjoyed. At the sound of Mr. Marigold’s voice, she bobbed up and
regarded the newcomers with the air of a tragedy queen.
“Yus mister,” she said with the slow deliberation of one who thoroughly
enjoys repeating an oft-told tale, “I found the pore man and a horrid
turn it give me, too, I declare! I come in early this morning a-purpose
to turn out these two rooms, the dining-room and the droring-room, same
as I always do of a Saturday, along of the lidy’s horders and wishes. I
come in ’ere fust, to pull up the blinds and that, and d’reckly I
switches on the light ‘Burglars!’ I sez to meself, ‘Burglars! That’s
wot it is!’ seeing the nasty mess the place was in. Up I nips to Miss
Mackwayte’s room on the first floor and in I bursts. ‘Miss,’ sez I,
‘Miss, there’s been burglars in the house!’ and then I sees the pore
lamb all tied up there on ’er blessed bed! Lor, mister, the turn it
give me and I ain’t telling you no lies! She was strapped up that tight
with a towel crammed in ’er mouth she couldn’t ’ardly dror ’er breath!
I undid ’er pretty quick and the fust thing she sez w’en I gets the
towl out of her mouth, the pore dear, is ‘Mrs. Chugg,’ she sez all of a
tremble as you might say, ‘Mrs. Chugg’ sez she, ‘my father! my father!’
sez she. With that up she jumps but she ’adn’t put foot to the floor
w’en down she drops! It was along of ’er being tied up orl that time,
dyer see, mister! I gets ’er back on the bed. ‘You lie still, Miss,’
says I, ‘and I’ll pop in and tell your pa to come in to you!’ Well; I
went to the old genelmun’s room. Empty!”
Mrs. Chugg paused to give her narrative dramatic effect.
“And where did you find Mr. Mackwayte?” asked the Chief in such a
placid voice that Mrs. Chugg cast an indignant glance at him.
“I was jes’ going downstairs to see if ’e was in the kitching or out at
the back,” she continued, unheeding the interruption, “when there on
the landing I sees a foot asticking out from under the curting. I pulls
back the curting and oh, Lor! oh, dear, oh, dear, the pore genelmun,
’im as never did a bad turn to no one!”
“Come, come, Mrs. Chugg!” said the detective.
The charwoman wiped her eyes and resumed.
“’E was a-lying on his back in ’is dressing-gown, ’is face all burnt
black, like, and a fair smother o’ blood. Under ’is hed there was a
pool o’ blood, mister, yer may believe me or not...”
Mr. Marigold cut in decisively.
“Do you wish to see the body, sir?” the detective asked the Chief,
“they’re upstairs photographing it!”
The Chief nodded. He and Desmond followed the detective upstairs,
whilst Mrs. Chugg resentfully resumed her seat by the fire. On her face
was the look of one who has cast pearls before swine.
“Any finger-prints?” asked the Chief in the hall.
“Oh, no,” he said, “Barney’s far too old a hand for that sort o’
thing!”
The landing proved to be a small space, covered with oilcloth and
raised by a step from the bend made by the staircase leading to the
first story. On the left-hand side was a window looking on a narrow
passage separating the Mackwayte house from its neighbors and leading
to the back-door. By the window stood a small wicker-work table with a
plant on it. At the back of the landing was a partition, glazed
half-way up and a door—obviously the bath-room.
The curtain had been looped right over its brass rod. The body lay on
its back at the foot of the table, arms flung outward, one leg doubled
up, the other with the foot just jutting out over the step leading down
to the staircase. The head pointed towards the bath-room door. Over the
right eye the skin of the face was blackened in a great patch and there
was a large blue swelling, like a bruise, in the centre. There was a
good deal of blood on the face which obscured the hole made by the
entrance of the bullet. The eyes were half-closed. A big camera,
pointed downwards, was mounted on a high double ladder straddling the
body and was operated by a young man in a bowler hat who went on with
his work without taking the slightest notice of the detective and his
companions.
“Close range,” murmured Desmond, after glancing at the dead man’s face,
“a large calibre automatic pistol, I should think!”
“Why do you think it was a large calibre pistol, Major?” asked Mr.
Marigold attentively.
“I’ve seen plenty of men killed at close range by revolver and rifle
bullets out at the front,” replied Desmond, “but I never saw a man’s
face messed up like this. In a raid once I shot a German at point blank
range with my revolver, the ordinary Army issue pattern, and I looked
him over after. But it wasn’t anything like this. The only thing I’ve
seen approaching it was one of our sergeants who was killed out on
patrol by a Hun officer who put his gun right in our man’s face. That
sergeant was pretty badly marked, but...”
He shook his head. Then he added, addressing the detective: “Let’s see
the gun! Have you got it?”
Mr. Marigold shook his head.
“He hadn’t got it on him,” he answered, “he swears he never had a gun.
I expect he chucked it away somewhere. It’ll be our business to find it
for him!”
He smiled rather grimly, then added:
“Perhaps you’d care to have a look at Miss Mackwayte’s room, sir!”
“Is Miss Mackwayte there” asked the Chief.
“I got her out of this quick,” replied Mr. Marigold, “she’s had a bad
shock, poor girl, though she gave her evidence clearly enough for all
that... as far as it goes and that’s not much. Some friends near by
have taken her in! The doctor has given her some bromide and says she’s
got to be kept quiet...”
“What’s her story!” queried the Chief.
“She can’t throw much light on the business. She and her father reached
home from the theatre about a quarter past twelve, had a bit of supper
in the dining-room and went up to bed before one o’clock. Miss
Mackwayte saw her father go into his room, which is next to hers, and
shut the door. The next thing she knows is that she woke up suddenly
with some kind of a loud noise in her ears... that was the report of
the pistol, I’ve no doubt... she thought for a minute it was an air
raid. Then suddenly a hand was pressed over her mouth, something was
crammed into her mouth and she was firmly strapped down to the bed.”
“Did she see the man?” asked Desmond.
“She didn’t see anything from first to last,” answered the detective,
“as far as she is concerned it might have been a woman or a black man
who trussed her up. It was quite dark in her bedroom and this burglar
fellow, after binding and gagging her, fastened a bandage across her
eyes into the bargain. She says she heard him moving about her room and
then creep out very softly. The next thing she knew was Mrs. Chugg
arriving at her bedside this morning.”
“What time did this attack take place?” asked the Chief.
“She has no idea,” answered the detective. “She couldn’t see her watch
and they haven’t got a striking clock in the house.”
“But can she make no guess!”
“Well, she says she thinks it was several hours before Mrs. Chugg
arrived in the morning... as much as three hours, she thinks!”
“And what time did Mrs. Chugg arrive!”
“At half-past six!”
“About Mackwayte... how long was he dead when they found him? What does
the doctor say?”
“About three hours approximately, but you know, they can’t always tell
to an hour or so!”
“Well,” said the Chief slowly, “it looks as if one might figure the
murder as having been committed some time between 3 and 3.30 a.m.”
“My idea exactly,” said Mr. Marigold. “Shall we go upstairs?”
He conducted the Chief and Desmond up the short flight of stairs to the
first story. He pushed open the first door he came to.
“Mackwayte’s room, on the back,” he said, “bed slept in, as you see,
old gentleman’s clothes on a chair—obviously he was disturbed by some
noise made by the burglar and came out to see what was doing! And
here,” he indicated a door adjoining, “is Miss Mackwayte’s room, on the
front; as you observe. They don’t use the two rooms on the second
floor, except for box-rooms... one’s full of old Mackwayte’s theatre
trunks and stuff. They keep no servant; Mrs. Chugg comes in each
morning and stays all day. She goes away after supper every evening.”
Desmond found himself looking into a plainly furnished but dainty
bedroom with white furniture and a good deal of chintz about. There
were some photographs and pictures hanging on the walls. The room was
spotlessly clean and very tidy.
Desmond remarked on this, asking if the police had put the room
straight.
Mr. Marigold looked quite shocked.
“Oh, no, everything is just as it was when Mrs. Chugg found Miss
Mackwayte this morning. There’s Miss Mackwayte’s gloves and handbag on
the toilet-table just as she left ’em last night. I wouldn’t let her
touch her clothes even. She went over to Mrs. Appleby’s in her
dressing-gown, in a taxi.”
“Then Master Burglar didn’t burgle this room?” asked the Chief.
“Nothing touched, not even the girl’s money,” replied Marigold.
“Then why did he come up here at all?” asked Desmond.
“Obviously, the old gentleman disturbed him,” was the detective’s
reply. “Barney got scared and shot the old gentleman, then came up here
to make sure that the daughter would not give him away before he could
make his escape. He must have known the report of the gun would wake
her up.”
“But are there no clues or finger-prints or anything of that kind here,
Marigold?” asked the Chief.
“Not a finger-print anywhere,” responded the other, “men like Barney
are born wise to the fingerprint business, sir.”
He dipped a finger and thumb into his waistcoat pocket.
“Clues? Well, I’ve got one little souvenir here which I daresay a
writer of detective stories would make a good bit of.”
He held in his hand a piece of paper folded flat. He unfolded it and
disclosed a loop of dark hair.
“There!” he said mockingly, straightening out the hair and holding it
up in the light. “That’s calculated to set one’s thoughts running all
over the place, isn’t it? That piece of hair was caught in the buckle
of one of the straps with which Miss Mackwayte was bound to the bed.
Miss Mackwayte, I would point out, has brown hair. _Whose hair do you
think that is?_”
Desmond looked closely at the strand of hair in the detective’s
fingers. It was long and fine and glossy and jetblack.
The Chief laughed and shook his head.
“Haven’t an idea, Marigold,” he answered, “Barney’s, I should imagine,
that is, if he goes about with black ringlets falling round his
shoulders.”
“Barney?” echoed the detective. “Barney’s as bald as I am. Besides, if
you saw his sheet, you’d realize that he has got into the habit of
wearing his hair short!”
He carefully rolled the strand of hair up, replaced it in its paper and
stowed it in his waistcoat pocket.
“It just shows how easily one is misled in a matter of this kind,” he
went on. “Supposing Barney hadn’t got himself nabbed, supposing I
hadn’t been able to find out from Miss Mackwayte her movements on the
night previous to the murder, that strand of hair might have led me on
a fine wild goose chase!”
“But, damn it, Marigold,” exclaimed the Chief, laughing, “you haven’t
told us whose hair it is?”
“Why, Nur-el-Din’s, of course!”
The smile froze on the Chief’s lips, the laughter died out of his eyes.
Desmond was amazed at the change in the man. The languid interest he
had taken in the different details of the crime vanished. Something
seemed to tighten up suddenly in his face and manner.
“Why Nur-el-Din?” he asked curtly.
Mr. Marigold glanced quickly at him. Desmond remarked that the
detective was sensible of the change too.
“Simply because Miss Mackwayte spent some time in the dancer’s
dressing-room last night, sir,” he replied quietly, “she probably sat
at her dressing-table and picked up this hair in hers or in her veil or
something and it dropped on the bed where one of Master Barney’s
buckles caught it up.”
He spoke carelessly but Desmond noticed that he kept a watchful eye on
the other.
The Chief did not answer. He seemed to have relapsed into the
preoccupied mood in which Desmond had found him that morning.
“I was going to suggest, sir,” said Mr. Marigold diffidently, “if you
had the time, you might care to look in at the Yard, and see the
prisoner. I don’t mind telling you that he is swearing by all the
tribes of Judah that he’s innocent of the murder of old Mackwayte. He’s
got an amazing yarn... perhaps you’d like to hear it!”
Mr. Marigold suddenly began to interest Desmond. His proposal was put
forward so modestly that one would have thought the last thing he
believed possible was that the Chief should acquiesce in his
suggestion. Yet Desmond had the feeling that the detective was far from
being so disinterested as he wished to seem. It struck Desmond that the
case was more complicated than Mr. Marigold admitted and that the
detective knew it. Had Mr. Marigold discovered that the Chief knew a
great deal more about this mysterious affair than the detective knew
himself? And was not his attitude of having already solved the problem
of the murder, his treatment of the Chief as a dilettante criminologist
simply an elaborate pose, to extract from the Chief information which
had not been proffered?
The Chief glanced at his watch.
“Right,” he said, “I think I’d like to go along.”
“I have a good deal to do here still,” observed Mr. Marigold, “so, if
you don’t mind, I won’t accompany you. But perhaps, sir, you would like
to see me this afternoon?”
The Chief swung round on his heel and fairly searched Mr. Marigold with
a glance from beneath his bushy eyebrows. The detective returned his
gaze with an expression of supreme innocence.
“Why, Marigold,” answered the Chief, “I believe I should. Six o’clock
suit you?”
“Certainly, sir,” said Mr. Marigold.
Desmond stood by the door, vastly amused by this duel of wits. The
Chief and Mr. Marigold made a move towards the door, Desmond turned to
open it and came face to face with a large framed photograph of the
Chief hanging on the wall of Miss Mackwayte’s bedroom.
“Why, Chief,” he cried, “you never told me you knew Miss Mackwayte!”
The Chief professed to be very taken aback by this question. “Dear me,
didn’t I, Okewood?” he answered with eyes laughing, “she’s my
secretary!”