Roger sat on the table in Moresby’s room at Scotland Yard and swung
his legs moodily. Moresby was being no help at all.
“I’ve told you, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, with a
patient air. “It’s not a bit of good you trying to pump me. I’ve told
you all we know here. I’d help you if I could, as you know”—Roger
snorted incredulously—“but we’re simply at a dead end.”
“So am I,” Roger grunted. “And I don’t like it.”
“You’ll soon get used to it, Mr. Sheringham,” consoled Moresby, “if
you take on this sort of job often.”
“I simply can’t get any further,” Roger lamented. “In fact I don’t
think I want to. I’m practically sure I’ve been working on the wrong
tack altogether. If the clue really does lie in Sir Eustace’s private
life, he’s shielding it like the very devil. But I don’t think it
does.”
“Humph!” said Moresby, who did.
“I’ve cross-examined his friends, till they’re tired of the sight of
me. I’ve cadged introductions to the friends of his friends, and the
friends of his friends of his friends, and cross-examined them too.
I’ve haunted his club. And what have I discovered? That Sir Eustace
was not only a daisy, as you’d told me already, but a perfectly
indiscreet daisy at that; the quite unpleasant type, fortunately very
much rarer than women suppose, that talks of his feminine successes,
with names—though I think that in Sir Eustace’s case this was simply
through lack of imagination and not any natural caddishness. But you
see what I mean. I’ve collected the names of scores of women, and they
all lead—nowhere! If there is a woman at the bottom of it, I should
have been sure to have heard of her by this time. And I haven’t.”
“And what about that American case, which we thought such an
extraordinary parallel, Mr. Sheringham?”
“That was cited last night by one of our members,” said Roger
gloomily. “And a very pretty little deduction she drew from it.”
“Ah, yes,” nodded the chief inspector. “That would be Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, I suppose. She thinks Sir Charles Wildman is the
guilty party, doesn’t she?”
Roger stared at him. “How the devil did you know that? Oh! The
unscrupulous old hag. She passed you the wink, did she?”
“Certainly not, sir,” retorted Moresby with a virtuous air, as if half
the difficult cases Scotland Yard solves are not edged in the first
place along the right path by means of “information received.” “She
hasn’t said a word to us, though I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been
her duty to do so. But there isn’t much that your members are doing
which we don’t know about, and thinking too for that matter.”
“We’re being shadowed,” said Roger, pleased. “Yes, you told me at the
beginning that we were to have an eye kept on us. Well, well. So in
that case, are you going to arrest Sir Charles?”
“Not yet, I think, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby returned gravely.
“What do you think of the theory, then? She made out a very striking
case for it.”
“I should be very surprised,” said Moresby with care, “to be convinced
that Sir Charles Wildman had taken to murdering people himself instead
of preventing us from hanging other murderers.”
“Less paying, certainly,” Roger agreed. “Yes, of course there can’t be
anything in it really, but it’s a nice idea.”
“And what theory are you going to put forward, Mr. Sheringham?”
“Moresby, I haven’t the faintest idea. And I’ve got to speak to-morrow
night, too. I suppose I can fake up something to pass muster, but it’s
a disappointment.” Roger reflected for a moment. “I think the real
trouble is that my interest in this case is simply academic. In all
the others it has been personal, and that not only gives one such a
much bigger incentive to get to the bottom of a case but somehow
actually helps one to do so. Bigger gleanings in the way of
information, I suppose. And more intimate sidelights on the people
concerned.”
“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Moresby, a little maliciously,
“perhaps you’ll admit now that we people here, whose interest is never
personal (if you mean by that looking at a case from the inside
instead of from the outside), have a bit of an excuse when we do come
to grief over a case. Which, by the way,” Moresby added with
professional pride, “is precious seldom.”
“I certainly do,” Roger agreed feelingly. “Well, Moresby, I’ve got to
go through the distressing business of buying a new hat before lunch.
Do you feel like shadowing me to Bond Street? I might afterwards walk
into a neighbouring hostelry, and it would be nice for you to be able
to shadow me in there too.”
“Sorry, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby pointedly, “but
_I_ have some work to do.”
Roger removed himself.
He was feeling so depressed that he took a taxi to Bond Street instead
of a ’bus, to cheer himself up. Roger, having been in London
occasionally during the war-years and remembering the interesting
habits cultivated by taxi-drivers during that period, had never taken
one since when a ’bus would do as well. The public memory is
notoriously short, but the public’s prejudices are equally notoriously
long.
Roger had reason for his depression. He was, as he had told Moresby,
not only at a dead end, but the conviction was beginning to grow in
him that he had actually been working completely on the wrong lines;
and the possibility that all the labour he had put into the case had
simply been time wasted was a sad one. His initial interest in the
affair, though great, had been as he had just realised only an
academic one, such as he would feel in any cleverly planned murder;
and in spite of the contacts established with persons who were
acquainted with various of the protagonists he still felt himself
awkwardly outside the case. There was no personal connection somehow
to enable him really to get to grips with it. He was beginning to
suspect that it was the sort of case, necessitating endless inquiries
such as a private individual has neither the skill, the patience nor
the time to prosecute, which can really only be handled by the
official police.
It was hazard, two chance encounters that same day and almost within
an hour, which put an entirely different complexion on the case to
Roger’s eyes, and translated at last his interest in it from the
academic into the personal.
The first was in Bond Street.
Emerging from his hat-shop, the new hat at just the right angle on his
head, he saw bearing down on him Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer was small, exquisite, rich, comparatively young,
and a widow, and she coveted Roger. Why, even Roger, who had his share
of proper conceit, could not understand, but whenever he gave her the
opportunity she would sit at his feet (metaphorically of course; he
had no intention of giving her the opportunity to do so literally) and
gaze up at him with her big brown eyes melting in earnest uplift. But
she talked. She talked, in short, and talked, and talked. And Roger,
who rather liked talking himself, could not bear it.
He tried to dart across the road, but there was no opening in the
traffic stream. He was cornered. With a gay smile that masked a
vituperative mind he spoilt the angle of his beautiful new hat.
Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer fastened on him gladly. “Oh, Mr. Sheringham!
Just the very person I wanted to see. Mr. Sheringham, _do_ tell me. In
the strictest confidence of course. _Are_ you taking up this dreadful
business of _poor_ Joan Bendix’s death? Oh, don’t—_don’t_ tell me
you’re not.” Roger tried to tell her that he had hoped to do so, but
she gave him no chance. “Oh, aren’t you really? But it’s too dreadful.
You ought, you know, you really _ought_ to try and find out who sent
those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather. I do think it’s naughty
of you not to.”
Roger, the frozen grin of civilised intercourse on his face, again
tried to edge a word in; without result.
“I was horrified when I heard of it. Simply horrified.” Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer registered horror. “You see, Joan and I were such
_very_ close friends. Quite intimate. In fact we were at school
together.—Did you say anything, Mr. Sheringham?”
Roger, who had allowed a faintly incredulous groan to escape him,
hastily shook his head.
“And the awful thing, the truly _terrible_ thing is that Joan brought
the whole thing on herself. Isn’t that appalling, Mr. Sheringham?”
Roger no longer wanted to escape. “What did you say?” he managed to
insert, again incredulously.
“I suppose it’s what they call tragic irony,” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
chattered happily. “Certainly it was tragic enough and I’ve never
heard of anything so terribly ironical. You know about that bet she
made with her husband, of course, so that he had to get her a box of
chocolates and if he hadn’t Sir Eustace would never have given him the
poisoned ones but would have eaten them and died himself, and from all
I hear about him good riddance? Well, Mr. Sheringham—” Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer lowered her voice to a conspirator-like whisper
and glanced about her in the approved manner. “I’ve never told any one
else this, but I’m telling you because I know you’ll appreciate it.
You _are_ interested in irony, aren’t you?”
“I adore it,” Roger said mechanically. “Yes?”
“Well—_Joan wasn’t playing fair!_”
“How do you mean?” Roger asked, bewildered. Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
was artlessly pleased with her sensation. “Why, she ought not to have
made that bet at all. It was a judgment on her. A terrible judgment of
course, but the appalling thing is that she did bring it on herself,
in a way. I’m so terribly distressed about it. Really, Mr. Sheringham,
I can hardly bear to turn the light out when I go to bed. I see Joan’s
face simply looking at me in the dark. It’s awful.” And for a fleeting
instant Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer’s face did for once really mirror the
emotion she professed: it looked quite haggard.
“Why oughtn’t Mrs. Bendix to have made the bet?” Roger asked
patiently.
“Oh! Why, because she’d seen the play before. We went together, the
very first week it was on. She _knew_ who the villain was all the
time.”
“By Jove!” Roger was as impressed as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer could
have wished. “The Avenging Chance again, eh? We’re none of us immune
from it.”
“Poetic justice, you mean?” twittered Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, to
whom these remarks had been a trifle obscure. “Yes it was, in a way,
wasn’t it? Though really, the punishment was out of all proportion to
the crime. Good gracious, if every woman who cheats over a bet is to
be killed for it, where would any of us be?” demanded Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer with unconscious frankness.
“Umph!” said Roger tactfully.
Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer glanced rapidly up and down the pavement, and
moistened her lips. Roger had an odd impression that she was talking
not as usual just for the sake of talking, but in some recondite way
to escape from not talking. It was as if she was more distressed over
her friend’s death than she cared to show and found some relief in
babbling. It interested Roger also to notice that fond though she had
probably been of the dead woman, she now found herself driven as if
against her will to hint at blame even while praising her. It was as
though she was able thus to extract some subtle consolation for the
actual death.
“But Joan Bendix of all people! That’s what I can’t get over, Mr.
Sheringham. I should never have thought Joan _would_ do a thing like
that. Joan was such a nice girl. A little close with money perhaps,
considering how well-off she was, but that isn’t anything. Of course I
know it was only fun, and pulling her husband’s leg, but I always used
to think Joan was such a _serious_ girl, if you know what I mean.”
“Quite,” said Roger, who could understand plain English as well as
most people.
“I mean, ordinary people don’t talk about honour, and truth, and
playing the game, and all those things one takes for granted. But Joan
did. She was always saying that this wasn’t honourable, or that
wouldn’t be playing the game. Well, she paid herself for not playing
the game, poor girl, didn’t she? Still, I suppose it all goes to prove
the truth of the old saying.”
“What old saying?” asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this flow.
“Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep after all,
I’m afraid.” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer sighed. It was evidently a grave
social error to be deep. “Not that I want to say anything against her
now she’s dead, poor darling, but—well, what I mean is, I do think
psychology is so very interesting, don’t you, Mr. Sheringham?”
“Quite fascinating,” Roger agreed gravely. “Well, I’m afraid I must
be—”
“And what does that man, Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about it all?”
demanded Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, with an expression of positive
vindictiveness. “After all, he’s as responsible for Joan’s death as
anybody.”
“Oh, really.” Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir
Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge.
“Really, I don’t think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”
“I can, and I do,” affirmed that lady. “Have you ever met him, Mr.
Sheringham? I hear he’s a horrible creature. Always running after some
woman or other, and when he’s tired of her just drops her—biff!—like
that. Is it true?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Roger said coldly. “I don’t know him at
all.”
“Well, it’s common talk who he’s taken up with now,” retorted Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the delicate aids
to nature on her cheeks would have warranted. “Half-a-dozen people
have told me. That Bryce woman, of all people. You know, the wife of
the oil man, or petrol, or whatever he made his money in.”
“I’ve never heard of her,” Roger said, quite untruthfully.
“It began about a week ago, they say,” rattled on this red-hot
gossiper. “To console himself for not getting Dora Wildman, I suppose.
Well, thank goodness Sir Charles had the sense to put his foot down
there. He did, didn’t he? I heard so the other day. Horrible man!
You’d have thought that such a dreadful thing as being practically
responsible for poor Joan’s death would have sobered him up a little,
wouldn’t you? But not a bit of it. As a matter of fact I believe he—”
“Have you seen any shows lately?” Roger asked in a loud voice.
Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer stared at him, for a moment nonplussed.
“Shows? Yes, I’ve seen almost everything, I think. Why, Mr.
Sheringham?”
“I just wondered. The new revue at the Pavilion’s quite good, isn’t
it? Well, I’m afraid I must—”
“Oh, don’t!” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer shuddered delicately. “I was
there the night before Joan’s death.” (Can no subject take us away
from that for a moment? thought Roger). “Lady Cavelstoke had a box and
asked me to join her party.”
“Yes?” Roger was wondering if it would be considered rude if he simply
handed the lady off, as at rugger, and dived for the nearest opening
in the traffic. “Quite a good show,” he said at random, edging
restlessly towards the curb. “I liked that sketch, _The Sempiternal
Triangle_, particularly.”
“_The Sempiternal Triangle_?” repeated Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
vaguely.
“Yes, quite near the beginning.”
“Oh! Then I may not have seen it. I got there a few minutes late, I’m
afraid. But then,” said Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer with pathos, “I
always do seem to be late for everything.” Roger noted mentally that
the few minutes was by way of a euphemism, as were most of Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer’s statements regarding herself. _The Sempiternal
Triangle_ had certainly not been in the first half-hour of the
performance.
“Ah!” Roger looked fixedly at an oncoming ’bus. “I’m afraid you’ll
have to excuse me, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. There’s a man on that
’bus who wants to speak to me. _Scotland Yard!_” he hissed, in an
impressive whisper.
“Oh! Then—then does that mean you _are_ looking into poor Joan’s
death, Mr. Sheringham? _Do_ tell me! I won’t breathe it to a soul.”
Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned in the
approved manner. “Yes!” he nodded, his finger to his lips. “But not a
word, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”
“Of course not, I promise.” But Roger was disappointed to notice that
the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had hoped. From her
expression he was almost ready to believe that she suspected how
unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little sorry that he had
taken on more than he could manage.
But the ’bus had now reached them, and with a hasty “Good-bye” Roger
swung himself on to the step as it lumbered past. With awful stealth,
feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his back, he climbed the
steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated scrutiny of the other
passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive little man in a bowler-hat.
The little man, who happened to be a clerk in the employment of a
monumental mason at Tooting, looked at him resentfully. There were
plenty of quite empty seats all round them.
The ’bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow Club.
He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent most of the
last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow Club as he knew,
however remotely, out to lunch in order to be asked to the club in
return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out of all this wasted
labour, and he anticipated nothing more to-day.
Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the tragedy. He
had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was as ready to adopt
responsibility for him on the strength of this tie as Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed himself more
than a little therefore on having a more intimate connection with the
business than his fellow-members. Indeed one gathered that the
connection was even a trifle closer than that of Sir Eustace himself.
Roger’s host was that kind of man.
As they were talking a man entered the dining-room and walked past
their table. Roger’s host became abruptly silent. The newcomer threw
him an abrupt nod and passed on.
Roger’s host leant forward across the table and spoke in the hushed
tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed. “Talk of the
devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I’ve seen him in here since
it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to pieces, you know. I’ve
never seen a man so devoted to his wife. It was a byword. Did you see
how ghastly he looked?” All this in a tactful whisper that must have
been far more obvious to the subject of it had he happened to be
looking their way than the loudest bellowing.
Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix’s face and
been shocked by it even before he learned his identity. It was haggard
and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness, prematurely old. “Hang
it all,” he now thought, much moved, “somebody really must make an
effort. If the murderer isn’t found soon it will kill that chap too.”
Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without tact: “He
didn’t exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were such bosom
friends?”
His host looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well, you must make allowances
just at present,” he hedged. “Besides, we weren’t _bosom_ friends
exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior to me. Or it
might have been three even. We were in different houses too. And he
was on the modern side of course (can you imagine the son of his
father being anything else?), while I was a classical bird.”
“I see,” said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host’s actual
contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that of
the latter’s toe with the former’s hinder parts.
He left it at that.
For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was
nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere,
somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of information
had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its importance.
It was not until he was putting on his coat half-an-hour later, and
for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into giving up
its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him unbidden, in
accordance with its usual and maddening way. He stopped dead, one arm
in his coat-sleeve, the other in act to fumble.
“_By Jove!_” he said softly.
“Anything the matter, old man?” asked his host, now mellowed by much
port.
“No, thanks; nothing,” said Roger hastily, coming to earth again.
Outside the club he hailed a taxi.
For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had
given somebody a constructive idea.
For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.