The Crime at Heatherfield
“That's a fine old turkey-cock,” Dr. Ringwood commented, as he and Sir
Clinton groped their way down the drive towards the gate of Ivy Lodge.
The Chief Constable smiled covertly at the aptness of the description.
“He certainly did gobble a bit at the start,” he admitted. “But that
type generally stops gobbling if you treat it properly. I shouldn't
care to live with him long, though. A streak of the domestic tyrant in
him somewhere, I'm afraid.”
Dr. Ringwood laughed curtly.
“It must have been a pretty household,” he affirmed. “You didn't get
much valuable information out of him, in spite of all his
self-importance and fuss.”
“A character-sketch or two. Things like that are always useful when
one drops like a bolt from the blue into some little circle, as we
have to do in cases of this sort. I suppose it's the same in your own
line when you see a patient for the first time: he may be merely a
hypochondriac or he may be out of sorts. You've nothing to go on in
the way of past experience of him. We're in a worse state, if
anything, because you can't have a chat with a dead man and find out
what sort of person he was. It's simply a case of collecting other
people's impressions of him in a hurry and discarding about half that
you hear, on the ground of prejudice.”
“At least you'll get his own impressions this time, if it's true that
he kept a diary,” the doctor pointed out.
“It depends on the diary,” Sir Clinton amended. “But I confess to some
hopes.”
As they drew near the door of Heatherfield, Dr. Ringwood's thoughts
reverted to the state of things in the house. Glancing up at the
front, his eye was caught by a lighted window which had been dark on
his previous visit.
“That looks like a bedroom up there with the light on,” he pointed out
to his companion. “It wasn't lit up last time I was here. Perhaps
Silverdale or his wife has come home.”
A shapeless shadow swept momentarily across the curtains of the
lighted room as they watched.
“That's a relief to my mind,” the doctor confessed. “I didn't quite
like leaving that maid alone with my patient. One never can tell what
may happen in a fever case.”
As they were ascending the steps, a further thought struck him.
“Do you want to be advertised here—your name, I mean?”
“I think not, at present, so long as I can telephone without being
overheard.”
“Very well. I'll fix it,” Dr. Ringwood agreed, as he put his finger on
the bell-push.
Much to his surprise, his ring brought no one to the door.
“That woman must be deaf, surely,” he said, as he pressed the button a
second time. “She came quick enough the last time I was here. I hope
nothing's gone wrong.”
Sir Clinton waited until the prolonged peal of the bell ended when the
doctor took his finger away, then he bent down to the slit of the
letter-box and listened intently.
“I could swear I heard someone moving about, just then,” he said, as
he rose to his full height again. “There must be someone on the
premises to account for the shadow we saw at the window. This looks a
bit rum, doctor. Ring again, will you?”
Dr. Ringwood obeyed. They could hear the trilling of a heavy gong
somewhere in the back of the house.
“That ought to wake anyone up, surely,” he said with a nervous tinge
in his voice. “This is my second experience of the sort this evening.
I don't much care about it.”
They waited for a minute, but no one came to the door.
“It's not strictly legal,” Sir Clinton said at last, “but we've got to
get inside somehow. I think we'll make your patient an excuse, if the
worst comes to the worst. Just wait here a moment and I'll see what
can be done.”
He went down the steps and disappeared in the fog. Dr. Ringwood waited
for a minute or two, and then steps sounded in the hall behind the
door. Sir Clinton opened it and motioned him to come in.
“The place seems to be empty,” he said hurriedly. “Stay here and see
that no one passes you. I want to go round the ground floor first of
all.”
He moved from door to door in the hall, switching on the lights and
swiftly inspecting each room as he came to it.
“Nothing here,” he reported, and then made his way into the kitchen
premises.
Dr. Ringwood heard his steps retreating; then, after a short interval,
there came the sound of a door closing and the shooting of a bolt. It
was not long before Sir Clinton reappeared.
“Somebody's been on the premises,” he said curtly. “That must have
been the sound I heard. The back door was open.”
Dr. Ringwood felt himself at a loss amid the complexities of his
adventures.
“I hope that confounded maid hasn't got the wind up and cleared out,”
he exclaimed, his responsibility for his patient coming foremost in
the confusion of the situation.
“No use thinking of chasing anyone through this fog,” Sir Clinton
confessed, betraying in his turn his own professional bias. “Whoever
it was has got clean away. Let's go upstairs and have a look round,
doctor.”
Leading the way, he snapped down the switch at the foot of the
stair-case; but to Dr. Ringwood's surprise, no light appeared above.
Sir Clinton pulled a flash-lamp from his pocket and hurried towards
the next flat; as he rounded the turn of the stair, he gave a muffled
exclamation. At the same moment, a high-pitched voice higher up in the
house broke into a torrent of aimless talk.
“That girl's a bit delirious,” Dr. Ringwood diagnosed, as he heard the
sound; and he quickened his ascent. But as he reached a little landing
and could see ahead of him, he was brought up sharply by the sight
which met his eyes. Sir Clinton was bending with his flash-lamp over a
huddled mass which lay on the floor at the head of the flight, and a
glance showed the doctor that it was the body of the maid who had
admitted him to the house on his earlier visit.
“Come here, doctor, and see if anything can be done for her,” Sir
Clinton's voice broke in on his surprise.
He leaped up the intervening steps and stooped in his turn over the
body, while Sir Clinton made way for him and kept the flash-lamp
playing on the face. Down the well of the stairs came the voice of the
delirious patient, sunk now to a querulous drone.
The briefest examination showed that the victim was beyond help.
“We might try artificial respiration, but it would really be simply
time lost. She's been strangled pretty efficiently.”
Sir Clinton's face had grown dark as he bent over the body, but his
voice betrayed nothing of his feelings.
“Then you'd better go up and look after that girl upstairs, doctor.
She's evidently in a bad way. I'll attend to things here.”
Dr. Ringwood mechanically switched on the light of the next flight in
the stairs and then experienced a sort of subconscious surprise to
find it in action.
“I thought the fuse had gone,” he explained involuntarily, as he
hurried up the stairs.
Left to himself, Sir Clinton turned his flash-lamp upwards on to the
functionless electric light bracket above the landing and saw, as he
had expected, that the bulb had been removed from the socket. A very
short search revealed the lamp itself lying on the carpet. The Chief
Constable picked it up gingerly and examined it minutely with his
pocket-light; but his scrutiny merely proved that the glass was
unmarked by any recent finger-prints. He put it carefully aside,
entered the lighted bedroom, and secured a fresh bulb from one of the
lamp-sockets there.
With this he returned to the landing and glanced round in search of
something on which to stand, so that he could put the new bulb in the
empty socket. The only available piece of furniture was a small table
untidily covered with a cloth, which stood in one corner of the
landing. Sir Clinton stepped across to it and inspected it minutely.
“Somebody's been standing on that,” he noted. “But the traces are just
about nil. The cloth's thick enough to have saved the table-top from
any marks of his boot-nails.”
Leaving the table untouched, he re-entered the room he had already
visited and secured another small table, by means of which he was able
to climb up and fix the new bulb in the empty socket over the landing.
It refused to light, however, and he had to go to the foot of the
stairs and reverse the switch before the current came on.
Shutting off his flash-lamp, Sir Clinton returned to the landing and
bent once more over the body. The cause of death was perfectly
apparent: a cord with a rough wooden handle at each end had been
slipped round the woman's throat and had been used as a tourniquet on
her neck. The deep biting of the cord into the flesh indicated with
sufficient plainness the brutality of the killer. Sir Clinton did not
prolong his examination, and when he had finished, he drew out his
pocket-handkerchief and covered the distorted face of the body. As he
did so, Dr. Ringwood descended the stairs behind him.
“I'll need to telephone for the hospital van,” he said. “It's out of
the question to leave that girl here in the state she's in.”
Sir Clinton nodded his agreement. Then a thought seemed to strike him.
“Quite off her rocker, I suppose?” he demanded. “Or did she understand
you when you spoke to her?”
“Delirious. She didn't even seem to recognise me,” Dr. Ringwood
explained shortly.
Then the reason for the Chief Constable's questions seemed to occur to
him.
“You mean she might be able to give evidence? It's out of the
question. She's got a very bad attack. She won't remember anything,
even if she's seen something or heard sounds. You'd get nothing out of
her.”
Sir Clinton showed no particular disappointment.
“I hardly expected much.”
Dr. Ringwood continued his way down stairs and made his way to the
telephone. When he had sent his message, he walked up again to the
first floor. A light was on in one of the rooms, and he pushed open
the door and entered, to find Sir Clinton kneeling on the floor in
front of an antique chest of drawers.
A glance round the room showed the doctor that it belonged to Mrs.
Silverdale. Through the half-open door of a wardrobe he caught sight
of some dresses; the dressing-table was littered with feminine
knick-knacks, among which was a powder-puff which the owner had not
replaced in its box; a dressing-jacket hung on a chair close to the
single bed. The whole room betrayed its constant use by some woman who
was prepared to spend time on her toilette.
“Found anything further?” Dr. Ringwood inquired as Sir Clinton glanced
up from his task.
“Nothing except this.”
The Chief Constable indicated the lowest drawer in front of him.
“Somebody's broken the lock and gone inside in a hurry. The drawer's
been shoved home anyhow and left projecting a bit. It caught my eye
when I came in.”
He pulled the drawer open as he spoke, and Dr. Ringwood moved across
and looked down into it over the Chief Constable's shoulder. A number
of jewel-boxes lay in one corner, and Sir Clinton turned his attention
to these in the first place. He opened them, one after another, and
found the contents of most of them in place. One or two rings, and a
couple of small articles seemed to be missing.
“Quite likely these are things she's wearing to-night,” he explained,
replacing the leather cases in the drawer as he spoke. “We'll try
again.”
The next thing which came to his hand was a packet of photographs of
various people. Among them was one of young Hassendean, but it seemed
to have no special value for Mrs. Silverdale, since it had been
carelessly thrust in among the rest of the packet.
“Nothing particularly helpful there, it seems,” was Sir Clinton's
opinion.
He turned next to several old dance-programmes which had been
preserved with some care. Lifting them in turn and holding them so
that the doctor could see them, the Chief Constable glanced at the
scribbled names of the various partners.
“One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow,” he pointed out. “No
initials, even—just an asterisk on the line.”
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
“Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often
at each dance.”
“Her dancing-partner, probably,” Dr. Ringwood surmised. “Young
Hassendean, most likely, I should think.”
Sir Clinton put down the programmes and searched again in the drawer.
His hand fell on a battered notebook.
“Part of a diary she seems to have kept while she was in a
convent. . . . H'm! Just a school-girl's production,” he turned over a
few pages, reading as he went, “and not altogether a nice
school-girl,” he concluded, after he had paused at one entry. “There's
nothing to be got out of that just now. I suppose it may be useful
later on, in certain circumstances.”
He laid the little book down again and turned once more to the drawer.
“That seems to be the lot. One thing's pretty clear. The person who
broke that lock wasn't a common burglar, for he'd have pouched the
trinkets. The bother is that we ought to find out what this search was
for; and since the thing has probably been removed, it leaves one with
a fairly wide field for guessing. Let's have another look round.”
Suddenly he bent forward and picked up a tiny object from the bottom
of the drawer. As he lifted it, Dr. Ringwood could see that it was a
scrap of paper; and when it was turned over he recognised it as a
fragment torn from the corner of an envelope with part of the stamp
still adhering to it.
“H'm! Suggestive rather than conclusive,” was Sir Clinton's verdict.
“My first guess would be that this has been torn off a roughly-opened
letter. So there must have been letters in this drawer at one time or
another. But whether our murderous friend was after a packet of
letters or not, one can't say definitely.”
He stood up and moved under the electric light in order to examine the
fragment closely.
“It's got the local post-mark on it. I can see the VEN. The date's
1925, but the month part has been torn.”
He showed the scrap to Dr. Ringwood and then placed it carefully in
his note-case.
“I hate jumping to conclusions, doctor; but it certainly does look as
if someone had broken in here to get hold of letters. And they must
have been pretty important letters if it was worth while to go the
length of casual murder to secure them.”
Dr. Ringwood nodded.
“He must have been a pretty hard case to murder a defenceless woman.”
Sir Clinton's face showed a faint trace of a smile.
“There are _two_ sexes, doctor.”
“What do you mean? . . . Oh, of course. I said ‘_he_ must,’ and you
think it might have been a woman?”
“I don't think so; but I hate to prejudge the case, you know. All that
one can really say is that _someone_ came here and killed that
unfortunate woman. The rest's simply conjecture and may be right or
wrong. It's easy enough to make up a story to fit the facts.”
Dr. Ringwood walked across to the nearest chair and sat down.
“My brain's too fagged to produce anything of the sort, I'm afraid,”
he admitted, “but I'd like to hear anything that would explain the
damned business.”
Sir Clinton closed the drawer gently and turned round to face the
doctor.
“Oh, it's easy enough,” he said, “whether it's the true solution or
not's quite another question. You came here about twenty past ten,
were let in by the maid, saw your patient, listened to what the maid
had to tell you—lucky for us you took that precaution or we'd have
missed all that evidence, since she can't tell us now—and left this
house at twenty-five to eleven. We came back again, just an hour
later. The business was done in between those times, obviously.”
“Not much theory there,” the doctor pointed out.
“I'm simply trying it over in my mind,” Sir Clinton explained, “and
it's just as well to have the time-limits clear to start with. Now we
go on. Some time after you had got clear away from here, the murderer
comes along. Let's call that person X, just to avoid all prejudice
about age or sex. Now X has thought out this murder beforehand, but
not very long beforehand.”
“How do you make that out?” Dr. Ringwood demanded.
“Because the two bits of wood which form the handles of the tourniquet
are simply pieces cut off a tree, and freshly cut, by the look of the
ends. X must have had possession of these before coming into the
house—hence premeditation. But if it had been a case of long
premeditation, X would have had something better in the way of
handles. I certainly wouldn't have risked landing on a convenient
branch at the last moment if I'd been doing the job myself; and X, I
may say, strikes me as a remarkably cool, competent person, as you'll
see.”
“Go on,” the doctor said, making no attempt to conceal his interest.
“Our friend X probably had the cord in his or her pocket and had
constructed the rough tourniquet while coming along the road. Our
friend X was wearing gloves, I may say.”
“How do you know that?” Ringwood asked.
“You'll see later. Now X went up to the front door and rang the bell.
The maid came along, recognised X. . . .”
“How do you know that?” Ringwood repeated.
“I don't know it. I’m just giving you the hypothesis you asked for. I
don't say it's correct. To continue: this person X inquired if
Silverdale (or Mrs. Silverdale, perhaps) was at home. Naturally the
maid said no. Most likely she told X that her companion had
scarlatina. Then X decided to leave a note, and was invited into the
house to write it. It was a long note, apparently; and the maid was
told to go to the kitchen and wait till X had finished. So off she
went.”
“Well?”
“X had no intention of putting pen to paper, of course. As soon as the
maid was out of the way, X slipped upstairs and switched on the light
in this room.”
“I'd forgotten it was the light in this window that we saw from the
outside,” Dr. Ringwood interrupted. “Go on.”
“Then, very quietly, by shifting the table on the landing under the
electric light, X removed the bulb that lighted the stair. One can
reach it by standing on that table. Then X shifted the table back to
its place. There were no finger-prints on the bulb—ergo, X must have
been wearing gloves, as I told you.”
“You seem to have got a lot of details,” the doctor admitted. “But why
all this manœuvring?”
“You'll see immediately. I think I said already that whoever did the
business was a very cool and competent person. When all was ready, X
attracted the maid's attention in some way. She came to the foot of
the stairs, suspecting nothing, but probably wondering what X was
doing, wandering about the house. It's quite likely that X made the
sick girl upstairs the pretext for calling and wandering out of
bounds. Anyhow, the maid came to the foot of the stairs and moved the
switch of the landing light. Nothing happened, of course, since the
bulb had been removed. She tried the switch backwards and forwards
once or twice most likely, and then she would conclude that the lamp
was broken or the fuse gone. Probably she saw the reflection of the
light from the room-door. In any case, she came quite unsuspiciously
up the stair.”
Sir Clinton paused, as though to allow the doctor to raise objections;
but none came, so he continued:
“Meanwhile X had taken up a position opposite the door of the room, at
the foot of the second flight of stairs. If you remember, a person
crouching there in semi-darkness would be concealed from anyone
mounting the first flight. The tourniquet was ready, of course.”
Dr. Ringwood shuddered slightly. Apparently he found Sir Clinton's
picture a vivid one, in spite of the casual tone in which it had been
drawn.
“The girl came up, quite unsuspicious,” Sir Clinton continued. “She
knew X; it wasn't a question of a street-loafer or anything of that
sort. An attack would be the last thing to cross her mind. And then,
in an instant, the attack fell. Probably she turned to go into the
lighted room, thinking that X was there; and then the noose would be
round her neck, a knee would be in her back and . . .”
With a grim movement, Sir Clinton completed his narrative of the
murder more effectively than words could have done.
“That left X a clear field. The girl upstairs was light-headed and
couldn't serve as a witness. X daren't go near her for fear of
catching scarlatina—and that would have been a fatal business, for
naturally we shall keep our eye on all fresh scarlet cases for the
next week or so. It's on the cards that her scarlatina has saved her
life.”
Dr. Ringwood's face showed his appreciation of this point.
“And then?” he pressed Sir Clinton.
“The rest's obvious. X came in here, hunting for something which we
haven't identified. Whatever it was, it was in this drawer and X knew
where it was. Nothing else has been disturbed except slightly—possibly
in a hunt for the key of the drawer in case it had been left lying
around loose. Not finding the key, X broke open the drawer and then we
evidently arrived. That must have been a nasty moment up here. I don't
envy friend X's sensations when we rang the front door bell. But a
cool head pulls one through difficulties of that sort. While we were
standing unsuspiciously on the front door steps, X slipped down
stairs, out of the back door, and into the safety of the fog-screen.”
The Chief Constable rose to his feet as he concluded.
“Then that's what happened, you think?” Doctor Ringwood asked.
“That's what _may_ have happened,” Sir Clinton replied cautiously.
“Some parts of it certainly are correct, since there's sound evidence
to support them. The rest's no more than guess-work. Now I must go to
the 'phone.”
As the Chief Constable left the room, the sick girl upstairs whimpered
faintly, and Dr. Ringwood got out of his chair with a yawn which he
could not suppress. He paused on the threshold and looked out across
the body to the spot at the turn of the stair. Sir Clinton's
word-picture of the murderer crouching there in ambush with his
tourniquet had been a little too vivid for the doctor's imagination.