The Bungalow Tragedy
In the course of his career, Sir Clinton Driffield had found it
important to devote some attention to his outward appearance; but his
object in doing so had been different from that of most men, for he
aimed at making himself as inconspicuous as possible. To look
well-dressed, but not too smart; to seem intelligent without betraying
his special acuteness; to be able to meet people without arousing any
speculations about himself in their minds; above all, to eliminate the
slightest suggestion of officialism from his manner: these had been
the objects of no little study on his part. In the days when he had
held junior posts, this protective mimicry of the average man had
served his purposes excellently, and he still cultivated it even
though its main purpose had gone.
Seated at his office desk, with its wire baskets holding packets of
neatly-docketed papers, he would have passed as a junior director in
some big business firm. Only a certain tiredness about his eyes hinted
at the sleepless night he had spent at Heatherfield and Ivy Lodge, and
when he began to open his letters, even this symptom seemed to fade
out.
As he picked up the envelopes before him, his eye was caught by the
brown cover of a telegram, and he opened it first. He glanced over the
wording and his eyebrows lifted slightly. Then, putting down the
document, he picked up his desk-telephone and spoke to one of his
subordinates.
“Has Inspector Flamborough come in?”
“Yes, sir. He's here just now.”
“Send him along to me, please.”
Replacing the telephone on its bracket, Sir Clinton picked up the
telegram once more and seemed to reconsider its wording. He looked up
as someone knocked on the door and entered the room.
“Morning, Inspector. You're looking a bit tired. I suppose you've
fixed up all last night's business?”
“Yes, sir. Both bodies are in the mortuary; the doctor's been warned
about the P.M.’s; the coroner's been informed about the inquests. And
I've got young Hassendean's papers all collected. I haven't had time
to do more than glance through them yet, sir.”
Sir Clinton gave a nod of approval and flipped the telegram across his
desk.
“Sit down and have a look at that, Inspector. You can add it to your
collection.”
Flamborough secured the slip of paper and glanced over it as he pulled
a chair towards the desk.
“‘_Chief Constable, Westerhaven. Try hassendean bungalow lizardbridge
road justice._’ H'm! Handed in at the G.P.O. at 8.5 a.m. this morning.
Seems to err a bit on the side of conciseness. He could have had three
more words for his bob, and they wouldn't have come amiss. Who sent
it, sir?”
“A member of the Order of the Helpful Hand, perhaps. I found it on my
desk when I came in a few minutes ago. Now you know as much about it
as I do, Inspector.”
“One of these amateur sleuths, you think, sir?” asked the Inspector,
and the sub-acid tinge in his tone betrayed his opinion of uninvited
assistants. “I had about my fill of that lot when we were handling
that Laxfield affair last year.”
He paused for a moment, and then continued:
“He's been pretty sharp with his help. It's handed in at 8.5 a.m. and
the only thing published about the affair is a stop-press note shoved
into the _Herald_. I bought a copy as I came along the road. Candidly,
sir, it looks to me like a leg-pull.”
He glanced over the telegram disparagingly.
“What does he mean by ‘Lizardbridge road justice’? There's no J.P.
living on the Lizardbridge Road; and even if there were, the thing
doesn't make sense to me.”
“I think ‘justice’ is the signature, Inspector—what one might term his
_nom-de-kid_, if one leaned towards slang, which of course you never
do.”
The Inspector grinned. His unofficial language differed considerably
from his official vocabulary, and Sir Clinton knew it.
“Justice? I like that!” Flamborough ejaculated contemptuously, as he
put the telegram down on the desk.
“It looks rather as though he wanted somebody's blood,” Sir Clinton
answered carelessly. “But all the same, Inspector, we can't afford to
put it into the waste-paper basket. We're very short of anything you
could call a real clue in both these cases last night, remember. It
won't do to neglect this, even if it does turn out to be a mare's
nest.”
Inspector Flamborough shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly, as
though to indicate that the decision was none of his.
“I'll send a man down to the G.P.O. to make inquiries at once, sir, if
you think it necessary. At that time in the morning there can't have
been many wires handed in and we ought to be able to get some
description of the sender.”
“Possibly,” was as far as Sir Clinton seemed inclined to go. “Send off
your man, Inspector. And while he's away, please find out something
about this Hassendean Bungalow, as our friend calls it. It's bound to
be known to the Post Office people, and you'd better get on the local
P.O. which sends out letters to it. The man who delivers the post
there will be able to tell you something about it. Get the 'phone to
work at once. If it's a hoax, we may as well know that at the earliest
moment.”
“Very well, sir,” said the Inspector, recognising that it was useless
to convert Sir Clinton to his own view.
He picked up the telegram, put it in his pocket, and left the room.
When the Inspector had gone, Sir Clinton ran rapidly through his
letters, and then turned to the documents in the wire baskets. He had
the knack of working his mind by compartments when he chose, and it
was not until Flamborough returned with his report that the Chief
Constable gave any further thought to the Hassendean case. He knew
that the Inspector could be trusted to get the last tittle of useful
information when he had been ordered to do so.
“The Hassendeans _have_ a bungalow on the Lizardbridge Road, sir,”
Flamborough confessed when he came back once more. “I got the local
postman to the 'phone and he gave me as much as one could expect. Old
Hassendean built the thing as a spec., hoping to get a good price for
it. Ran it up just after the war. But it cost too much, and he's been
left with it on his hands. It's just off the road, on the hill about
half-way between here and the new place they've been building lately,
that farm affair.”
“Oh, there?” Sir Clinton answered. “I think I know the place. I've
driven past it often: a brown-tiled roof and a lot of wood on the
front of the house.”
“That's it, sir. The postman described it to me.”
“Anything more about it?”
“It's empty most of the year, sir. The Hassendeans use it as a kind of
summer place—shift up there in the late spring, usually, the postman
said. It overlooks the sea and stands high, you remember. Plenty of
fresh air. But it's shut up just now, sir. They came back to town over
two months ago—middle of September or thereabouts.”
Sir Clinton seemed to wake up suddenly.
“That fails to stir you, Inspector? Strange! Now it interests me
devilishly, I can assure you. We'll run up there now in my car.”
The Inspector was obviously disconcerted by this sudden desire for
travel.
“It's hardly worth your while to go all that way, sir,” he protested.
“I can easily go out myself if you think it necessary.”
Sir Clinton signed a couple of documents before replying. Then he rose
from his chair.
“I don't mind saying, Inspector, that two murders within three hours
is too high an average for my taste when they happen in my district.
It's a case of all hands to the pumps, now, until we manage to get on
the track. I'm not taking the thing out of your hands. It's simply
going on the basis that two heads are better than one. We've got to
get to the bottom of the business as quick as we can.”
“I quite understand, sir,” Flamborough acknowledged without pique.
“There's no grudge in the matter. I'm only afraid that this business
is a practical joke and you'll be wasting your time.”
Sir Clinton dissented from the last statement with a movement of his
hand.
“By the way,” he added, “we ought to take a doctor with us. If there's
anything in the thing at all, I've a feeling that Mr. Justice hasn't
disturbed us for a trifle. Let's see. Dr. Steel will have his hands
full with things just now; we'll need to get someone else. That
Ringwood man has his wits about him, from what I saw of him. Ring him
up, Inspector, and ask him if he can spare the time. Tell him what
it's about, and if he's the sportsman I take him for, he'll come if he
can manage it. Tell him we'll call for him in ten minutes and bring
him home again as quick as we can. And get them to bring my car round
now.”
Twenty minutes later, as they passed up an avenue, Sir Clinton turned
to Dr. Ringwood:
“Recognise it, doctor?”
Dr. Ringwood shook his head.
“Never seen it before to my knowledge.”
“You were here last night, though. Look, there's Ivy Lodge.”
“So I see by the name on the gate-post. But remember it's the first
time I've seen the house itself. The fog hid everything last night.”
Sir Clinton swung the car to the left at the end of the avenue.
“We shan't be long now. It's a straight road out from here to the
place we're bound for.”
As they reached the outskirts of Westerhaven, Sir Clinton increased
his speed, and in a very short time Dr. Ringwood found himself
approaching a long low bungalow which faced the sea-view at a little
distance from the road. It had been built in the shelter of a
plantation, the trees of which dominated it on one side; and the
garden was dotted with clumps of quick-growing shrubs which helped to
give it the appearance of maturity.
Inspector Flamborough stepped down from the back seat of the car as
Sir Clinton drew up.
“The gate's not locked,” he reported, as he went up to it. “Just wait
a moment, sir, while I have a look at the surface of the drive.”
He walked a short distance towards the house, with his eyes on the
ground; then he returned and swung the leaves of the gate open for the
car to pass.
“You can drive in, sir,” he reported. “The ground was hard last night,
you remember; and there isn't a sign of anything in the way of
footmarks or wheel-prints to be seen there.”
As the car passed him, he swung himself aboard again; and Sir Clinton
drove up to near the house.
“We'll get down here, I think, and walk the rest,” he proposed,
switching off his engine. “Let's see. Curtains all drawn. . . . Hullo!
One of the small panes of glass on that front window has been smashed,
just at the lever catch. You owe an apology to Mr. Justice, Inspector,
I think. He's not brought us here to an absolute mare's nest, at any
rate. There's been housebreaking going on.”
Followed by the others, he walked over to the damaged window and
examined it carefully.
“No foot-prints or anything of that sort to be seen,” he pointed out,
glancing at the window-sill. “The window's been shut, apparently,
after the housebreaker got in—if he did get in at all. That would be
an obvious precaution, in case the open window caught someone's eye.”
He transferred his attention to the casement itself. It was a
steel-framed one, some four feet high by twenty inches wide, which
formed part of a set of three which together made up the complete
window. Steel bars divided it into eight small panes.
“The Burglar's Delight!” Sir Clinton described it scornfully. “You
knock in one pane, just like this; then you put your hand through;
turn the lever-fastener; swing the casement back on its hinges—and
walk inside. There isn't even the trouble of hoisting a sash as you
have to do with the old-fashioned window. Two seconds would see you
inside the house, with only this affair to tackle.”
He glanced doubtfully at the lever handle behind the broken glass.
“There might be finger-prints on that,” he said. “I don't want to
touch it. Just go round to the front door, Inspector, and see if it's
open by any chance. If not, we'll smash the glass at the other end of
this window and use the second casement to get in by, so as not to
confuse things.”
When the Inspector had reported the front door locked, the Chief
Constable carried out his proposal; the untouched casement swung open,
and they prepared to enter the room, which hitherto had been concealed
from them by the drawn curtains. Sir Clinton led the way, and as he
pushed the curtain out of his road, his companions heard a bitten-off
exclamation.
“Not much of a mare's nest, Inspector,” he continued in a cooler tone.
“Get inside.”
The Inspector, followed by Dr. Ringwood, climbed through the open
casement and stared in astonishment at the sight before them. The
place they had entered was evidently one of the sitting-rooms of the
bungalow, and the dust-sheets which covered the furniture indicated
that the building had been shut up for the winter. In a big arm-chair,
facing them as they entered, sat the body of a girl in evening dress
with a cloak around her shoulders. A slight trail of blood had oozed
from a wound in her head and marked her shoulder on the right side. On
the floor at her feet lay an automatic pistol. One or two small chairs
seemed to have been displaced roughly in the room, as though some
struggle had taken place; but the attitude of the girl in the chair
was perfectly natural. It seemed as though she had sat down merely to
rest and death had come upon her without any warning, for her face had
no tinge of fear in its expression.
“I wasn't far out in putting my money on Mr. Justice, Inspector,” Sir
Clinton said thoughtfully, as he gazed at the dead girl. “It might
have been days before we came across this affair without his help.”
He glanced round the room for a moment, biting his lip as though
perplexed by some problem.
“We'd better have a general look round before touching the details,”
he suggested, at last; and he led the way out of the room into the
hall of the bungalow. “We'll try the rooms as we come to them.”
Suiting the action to the word, he opened the first door that came to
hand. It proved to be that of a dismantled bedroom. The dressing-table
was bare and everything had been removed from the bed expect a wire
mattress. The second door led into what was obviously the dining-room
of the bungalow; and here again the appearance of the room showed that
the house had been shut up for the season. A third trial revealed a
lavatory.
“H'm! Clean towels hanging on the rail?” Sir Clinton pointed out.
“That's unusual in an empty house, isn't it?”
Without waiting for a minuter examination, he turned to the next door.
“Some sort of store-room, apparently. These mattresses belong to the
beds, obviously.”
Along one side of the little room were curtained shelves. Sir Clinton
slid back the curtains and revealed the stacked house-napery, towels,
and sheets.
“Somebody seems to have been helping themselves here,” he indicated,
drawing his companions’ attention to one or two places where the
orderly piling of the materials had been disturbed by careless
withdrawals. “We'll try again.”
The next room provided a complete contrast to the rest of the house.
It was a bedroom with all its fittings in place. The bed, fully made
up, had obviously not been slept in. The dressing-table was covered
with the usual trifles which a girl uses in her toilette. Vases, which
obviously did not belong to the normal equipment of the room, had been
collected here and filled with a profusion of expensive flowers. Most
surprising of all, an electric stove, turned on at half power, kept
the room warm.
“She's been living here!” the Inspector exclaimed in a tone which
revealed his astonishment.
Sir Clinton made a gesture of dissent. He crossed the room, and threw
open the door of a cupboard wardrobe, revealing empty hooks and
shelves.
“She'd hardly be living here with nothing but an evening frock in the
way of clothes, would she?” he asked. “You can look round if you like,
Inspector; but I'm prepared to bet that she never set foot in this
room. You won't find much.”
He stepped over to the dressing-table and examined one by one the
knick-knacks placed upon it.
“These things are all split-new, Inspector. Look at this face-powder
box—not been opened, the band's still intact on it. And the
lip-stick's unused. You can see that at a glance.”
Flamborough had to admit the truth of his superior's statements.
“H'm!” he reflected. “Of course it's Mrs. Silverdale, I suppose, sir?”
“I should think so, but we can make sure about it very soon. In the
meantime, let's finish going round the premises.”
The rest of the survey revealed very little. The remainder of the
house was obviously dismantled for the winter. Only once did Sir
Clinton halt for any time, and that was in the pantry. Here he
examined the cups suspended from hooks on the wall and pointed out to
Flamborough the faint film of accumulated dust on each of them.
“None of that crockery has been used for weeks, Inspector. One can't
live in a house without eating and drinking, you know.”
“A port of call, then?” the Inspector persisted. “She and young
Hassendean could drop in here without rousing any suspicion.”
“Perhaps,” Sir Clinton conceded abstractedly. “Now we'll get Dr.
Ringwood to give his assistance.”
He led the way back to the room through which they had entered the
house.
“She was dead before that shot was fired, of course,” he said as they
crossed the threshold. “But beyond that there ought to be something to
be seen.”
“What makes you so sure that the shot didn't kill her, sir?” the
Inspector demanded.
“Because there wasn't half enough blood scattered about the place. She
was dead when the shot was fired—must have been dead for some minutes,
I suspect. There was no heart-action to lift the blood in her body, so
consequently it sank under gravity and left her skull nearly empty of
it. Then when the shot was fired, only the merest trickle came from
the wound. I think that's right, isn't it, doctor?”
“It's quite on the cards,” Dr. Ringwood agreed. “Certainly there
wasn't the normal amount of bleeding that one might have expected.”
“Then the really important point is: how did she come to die. This is
where we rely on you, doctor. Go ahead, please, and see what you make
of it.”
Dr. Ringwood went over to the arm-chair and began his examination of
the dead girl. His glance travelled first to the open eyes, which
seemed curiously dark; and a very brief inspection of their abnormal
appearance suggested one possible verdict.
“It looks as if she'd had a dose of one of these mydriatic
drugs—atropine, or something of that sort. The eye-pupils are markedly
dilated,” he pronounced.
Sir Clinton refrained from glancing at the Inspector.
“I suppose you couldn't make a guess at the time of death?” he
inquired.
Dr. Ringwood tested the stiffness of the limbs, but from his face they
gathered that it was almost a purely formal experiment.
“I'm not going to bluff about the thing. You know yourselves that
_rigor mortis_ is only the roughest test; and when there's an unknown
poison to complicate matters, I simply couldn't give you a figure that
would be worth the breath spent on it. She's been dead for some
hours—and you could have guessed that for yourselves.”
“Congratulations, doctor! There are so few people in this world who
have the honesty to say: ‘I don't know,’ when they're questioned on
their own speciality. Now you might have a look at the wound, if you
don't mind.”
While Dr. Ringwood was carrying out this part of his examination,
Inspector Flamborough occupied himself in a search of the room. An
ejaculation from him brought Sir Clinton to his side, and the
Inspector pointed to a dark patch on the floor which had hitherto been
concealed by one of the displaced chairs.
“There's quite a big pool of blood here, sir,” he said tilting the
chair so that the Chief Constable could see it better. “What do you
make of that?”
Sir Clinton looked at him quizzically.
“Think you've caught me tripping, Inspector? Not in this, I'm afraid.
That's not the girl's blood at all. Unless I'm far out, it's young
Hassendean's. Now, while you're about it, will you have a good look
for empty cartridge-cases on the floor. There ought to be three of
them.”
The Inspector set to work, industriously grovelling on the floor as he
searched under the heavier articles of furniture in the room.
“Well, doctor, what do you make of it?” Sir Clinton asked, when he saw
that Ringwood had completed his examination.
“It's plain enough on the surface,” the doctor answered, as he turned
away from the body. “She must have been shot at quite close quarters,
just above the ear. Her hair is singed with the flame of the powder.
The bullet went clean through the head and then into the padded
ear-piece of the chair. I expect it's stuck there. You can see for
yourself that the shot didn't produce any twitch in the body; the
position she's sitting in shows that well enough. I'm quite prepared
to bet that she was dead before the shot was fired.”
“The P.M. will clear that up for us definitely, if the poison can be
detected,” Sir Clinton answered. “But these vegetable poisons are
sometimes the very devil to spot, if they're at all out-of-the-way
ones.”
He turned back to the Inspector, who was now on his feet again,
dusting the knees of his trousers.
“I've found three cartridge-cases sure enough, sir,” he reported. “Two
of them are under that couch over there; the third's in the corner
near the window. I didn't pick them up. We'll need to make a plan of
this room, I expect; and it's safest to leave things as they are, so
as to be sure of the exact spots.”
Sir Clinton signified his approval.
“On the face of things, judging by the way an automatic ejects its
cartridge, one might say that the single case near the window came
from the shot that killed the girl. The other two, which landed
somewhere near each other, might represent the two shots that made the
wounds in young Hassendean's lung. But that's mere speculation. Let's
have a look at the pistol, Inspector.”
Flamborough put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, stooped down,
picked up the pistol gingerly, and drew a rough outline of its
position on the floor with a piece of chalk.
“Try it for finger-prints, sir?” he inquired. “I've got an insufflator
in the car.”
Receiving permission, he hurried off to procure his powder-sprayer,
and in a few minutes he had treated the pistol with the revealing
medium. As he did so, his face showed deepening disappointment.
“Nothing worth troubling about here, sir. Whoever it was handled this
pistol last must have been wearing gloves. There's nothing to be seen
but a few smears of no use to us at all.”
Sir Clinton seemed in no wise depressed by the news.
“Then just open it up, Inspector, and have a look at the magazine.”
“It's three shots short of being full, sir, counting the cartridge
that must be in the barrel now,” Flamborough explained, after he had
slid the magazine from the butt.
“Then you've found all the empty cases corresponding to the number of
shots fired from _this_ pistol, at any rate. We can leave someone else
to hunt for extras when the plan's being made. I don't expect they'll
discover any. Now we'll—H'm! What's this?”
He stepped swiftly across the room and lifted something which had
rolled under a little book-case standing on four feet. As he picked it
up, his companions saw that it was an amber cigarette holder.
Flamborough's face betrayed some mortification.
“I could have sworn I looked under there,” he declared.
“So you did, Inspector; but it happened to be close up to one of the
feet of the bookcase, and probably it was hidden from you in the
position you were when you lay on the floor. It just happened to be in
the right line from where I was standing a moment ago. Now let's have
a look at it.”
He held it out, handling it by the tip with the greatest precaution to
avoid leaving his finger-prints upon the tube. At first sight, it
seemed simply a cigarette-holder such as could be bought in any
tobacconist's shop; but as he rotated it between his finger and thumb,
the other side of the barrel came into view and revealed a fly
embedded in the material.
“One hears a lot about flies in amber,” Sir Clinton said, “but this is
the first time I've seen one.”
Dr. Ringwood bent over and examined the imprisoned insect.
“That ought to be easy enough to identify,” he commented. “I never saw
a fly in amber before; and that one, with its wings half-spread, must
be fairly well known to most of the owner's friends.”
“It may have nothing to do with the case, though,” Inspector
Flamborough put in. “It's quite on the cards that it was dropped there
at the time the house was open for the summer. Some visitor may have
lost it, for all one can tell. Or it may belong to either of the
Hassendeans.”
Sir Clinton twisted the little object into a vertical position and
peered into the cavity which had received the cigarettes’ ends.
“It's not a left-over from summer, Inspector. The tube's got quite a
lot of tarry liquid in it. That would have gone viscid if the thing
had been lying there for a couple of months. No, it's been used quite
recently—within the last day or two, certainly.”
He moved towards the window.
“Just bring that machine of yours, Inspector, and blow some powder
over it, please.”
Flamborough obeyed; but the application of the powder revealed nothing
except a few shapeless blotches on the stem of the holder.
“Nothing!” Ringwood exclaimed, with more than a tinge of
disappointment in his tone.
“Nothing,” Sir Clinton admitted.
He handed the holder to Flamborough, who stowed it away safely.
“We've still to overhaul the body,” the Chief Constable suggested.
“You'd better do that, Inspector.”
“Not much help in these modern dresses,” said Flamborough, eyeing the
girl's evening frock with a disparaging glance. “But she ought to have
a bag with her, surely. . . . Here it is!”
He plunged his hand between the body and the chair and withdrew a
little bag, which he proceeded to open.
“The usual powder-box,” he began, enumerating the articles as they
came to hand, “Small mirror, silver-mounted, no initials on it. Small
comb. Lipstick—been used once or twice. No money. No handkerchief.”
“You found Mrs. Silverdale's handkerchief in the car last night,” Sir
Clinton reminded him.
“Then I suppose this must be her body, right enough, sir. Well, that
seems to be all that's here.”
“What about these rings she's wearing,” the Chief Constable suggested.
“See if you can get them off. There may be some inscriptions on the
inside; some women go in for that kind of thing.”
Fortunately the hands of the body were relaxed, and it was possible to
remove the circlets from the fingers. Flamborough rose with three
rings in his possession, which he examined with care.
“You're on the mark there, sir, right enough. Here's her wedding-ring.
It's engraved ‘7–11–23’—that'll be the date of her marriage, I
suppose. Then on each side of the date are initials. ‘Y.S.’—that's for
Yvonne Silverdale, obviously; and ‘F.S.’—these'll be her husband's
initials. Then there's a diamond ring that she was using for a keeper.
Let's see. It's got the same pairs of initials on each side of the
date ‘4–10–23.’ That'll be her engagement-ring, I expect. H'm! They
don't seem to have given themselves much time for second thoughts if
the engagement lasted only a month and three days.”
He passed the two rings to Sir Clinton and picked the last one from
his palm for examination.
“This is off the little finger. It's a plain gold signet with Y and S
intertwined on it. Evidently it's Mrs. Silverdale right enough, sir.
The inscription's inside . . . H'm! there's a variation here. The
date's ‘15–11–25’ here; but there's only a single letter at each end:
a Y at one side and a B at the other. That's a bit of a puzzle,” he
concluded, glancing at his superior to see if he could detect anything
in his face.
“I agree with you, Inspector,” was all that he elicited for his pains.
“Now take off the bracelet, and that string of pearls round her neck.
Anything of note on the bracelet?”
“Nothing whatever, sir,” the Inspector reported after a glance at it.
“Well, you'd better put these in a safe place when we get back to
town. Now does that finish us here?”
He glanced round the room and his eye was caught by the second window
which looked out from the side of the bungalow. The curtains were
still undrawn, and he noticed a minute gap through which the outer
daylight could pass freely. A thought seemed to strike him as he ran
his eyes over the fabric.
“We'll just go outside for a minute,” he announced, and led the way
through the hall and out of the front door. “Let's see, that window's
round here, isn't it. Keep back for a moment.”
He halted outside the window and scrutinised the ground with care for
a few seconds.
“See that, Inspector?” he inquired. “There aren't any foot-prints that
one could make anything out of; but someone has put his foot on the
box edging of the path just in front of the window. It's quite
obviously crushed . . . and freshly crushed, too, by the look of it.”
Stepping softly on to the flower-bed which lay under the window-sill,
he bent down until his eye was level with the chink between the
curtains and peered through into the room.
“That's interesting,” he said, as he turned again to face his
companions. “One gets quite a good view of the room from here; and it
looks as if somebody had taken advantage of it last night. Nobody
would attempt to look into a shut-up house in the dark, so presumably
the lights were on when he took the trouble to put his eye to the
crack.”
The Inspector made no pretence of concealing his delight.
“If we could only get hold of him. Perhaps he saw the murder actually
done, sir.”
Sir Clinton seemed disinclined to rejoice too fervently.
“It's all pure hypothesis,” he pointed out, rather frigidly.
Flamborough's rectitude forced him into a semi-apology for past
doubts.
“You were quite right about Mr. Justice, sir. He's been a trump-card;
and if we can only get hold of him and find out what he saw here last
night, the rest ought to be as easy as kiss-your-hand.”
Sir Clinton could not restrain a smile.
“You're devilish previous, Inspector, in spite of all I can do. This
Peeping Tom may be Mr. Justice, or again he may not. There isn't any
evidence either way.”
He stepped back on to the path again.
“Now, Inspector, we'll have to leave you here in charge. It seems to
be your usual rôle in these days. I'll send a couple of men up to
relieve you—the fellow who makes our scale-models, too. You can set
him to work. And I'll make arrangements for the removal of Mrs.
Silverdale's body.”
“Very good, sir. I'll stay here till relieved.”
“Then Dr. Ringwood and I had better get away at once.”
They walked round the bungalow to the car. As he drove away, Sir
Clinton turned to the doctor.
“We must thank you again, doctor, for coming out here.”
“Oh, that's all right,” Ringwood assured him. “I got Ryder to look
after my patients—at least the worst ones—this morning. Very decent of
him. He made no bones about it when he heard it was you who wanted me.
It hasn't been a pleasant job, certainly; but at least it's been a
change from the infernal grind of Carew's practice.”
Sir Clinton drove for a few minutes in silence, then he put a question
to the doctor.
“I suppose it's not out of the question that young Hassendean might
have driven from the bungalow to Ivy Lodge with those wounds in his
lungs?”
“I see nothing against it, unless the P.M. shows something that makes
it impossible. People with lung-wounds—even fatal ones—have managed to
get about quite spryly for a time. Of course, it's quite on the cards
that his moving about may have produced fresh lesions in the tissues.
What surprises me more is how he managed to find his way home through
that fog last night.”
“That wouldn't be so difficult,” Sir Clinton rejoined. “This road runs
right from the bungalow to the end of Lauderdale Avenue. He'd only to
keep his car straight and recognise the turn when he came to it. It
wasn't a case of having to dodge through a network of streets.”
A thought seemed to occur to him.
“By the way, doctor, did you notice any peculiar coincidence in dates
that we've come across?”
“Dates? No, can't say I did. What do you mean?”
“Well,” the Chief Constable pointed out deliberately, “the date on
that scrap from the torn envelope we found in the drawer was 1925, and
the figures on that mysterious signet-ring were 5–11–25. It just
happened to strike me.”
His manner suggested that he had no desire to furnish any further
information. Dr. Ringwood changed the subject.
“By the way, you didn't examine the lever handle of the window for
finger-prints,” he said, with a note of interrogation in his voice.
“The Inspector will do that. He's very thorough. In any case, I don't
expect to find much on the lever.”
For a few moments Sir Clinton concentrated his attention on his
driving, as they were now within the outskirts of Westerhaven. When he
spoke again, his remark struck the doctor as obscure.
“I wish that poor girl who was done in at Heatherfield last night
hadn't been such a tidy creature.”
Dr. Ringwood stared.
“Why?” he inquired.
“Because if she'd shirked her job and left those coffee-cups unwashed,
it might have saved us a lot of bother. But when I looked over the
scullery, everything had been washed and put away.”
“Well . . . you don't seem to miss much,” the doctor confessed. “I
suppose it was what I repeated to you about Mrs. Silverdale looking
queer when she came out of the drawing-room—that put you on the track?
You were thinking of drugs, even then?”
“That was it,” Sir Clinton answered. Then, after a moment he added:
“And I've got a fair notion of what drug was used, too.”