The Hassendean Journal
When Ronald Hassendean's journal was found to consist of four bulky
volumes of manuscript, Sir Clinton hastily disclaimed any desire to
make its acquaintance _in extenso_ and passed over to Inspector
Flamborough the task of ploughing through it in detail and selecting
those passages which seemed to have direct bearing on the case. The
Inspector took the diary home with him and spent a laborious evening,
lightened at times by flashes of cynical enjoyment when the writer
laid bare certain aspects of his soul. Next day Flamborough presented
himself at Sir Clinton's office with the books under his arm; and the
paper slips which he had used as markers made a formidable array as
they projected from the edges of the volumes.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the Chief Constable in consternation. “Do you
mean to say I ought to read through about a hundred and fifty passages
in inferior handwriting? Life's too short for that. Take 'em away,
Inspector, and get someone to write me a _précis_.”
Flamborough's lips opened into a broad smile under his toothbrush
moustache.
“It's not really so bad as it looks, sir,” he explained. “The white
slips were put in to mark anything that seemed to bear remotely on the
business; but the passages directly relevant to the affair are
indicated by red slips. I think you ought to glance through that last
lot. There aren't really very many of them.”
He deposited the volumes on Sir Clinton's desk so that the
marking-tabs projected towards his superior. Sir Clinton eyed them
without any enthusiasm.
“Well, I suppose duty calls, Inspector. I'll go over them with you,
just in case you want to give me any special points drawn from your
general reading in the Works of Hassendean. If you've got a morbid
craving for voluminous writers, you'd better start on the _Faerie
Queene_. It, also, leads up to the death of a Blatant Beast.”
“I read a bit of it at school, sir. I'm keeping the rest for a rainy
day.”
Sir Clinton again eyed the four stout volumes with unconcealed
aversion. Quite obviously he was ready to catch at anything in order
to postpone the examination of them, even now that he had decided to
submit to the Inspector's ruling.
“Before I start on this stuff, there are one or two points I want to
get cleared up. First of all, did you get any reports in reply to our
inquiries about young Hassendean's car being seen on the roads that
night?”
“No, sir. The only motor information we got was about one car that was
stolen under cover of the fog. It's being looked into. Oh, yes, and
there was an inquiry for the name and address of the owner of a car.
It seems somebody got hit by a motor and managed to take its number. I
don't think any real damage was done. It's just one of these try-on
cases.”
“Something more important now. Did you find out from the man on the
beat whether there was a light in Silverdale's room at the
Croft-Thornton on the night of the murders?”
“How did you come to think of that, sir? I didn't mention it to you.”
“It was just a long shot, Inspector. As soon as Silverdale stated that
he had been working all that night at the Croft-Thornton, I was pretty
sure he was lying. So were you, I guessed. Then you walked across to
the window and looked down. As I was wondering myself whether the
window was visible from the street, it didn't take much mind-reading
to see what you were driving at. And from your questions to Markfield
later on, I couldn't help inferring that you had the constable on the
beat at the back of your thoughts. Obviously you meant to check
Silverdale's story by asking the constable on duty if he'd noticed a
light in Silverdale's room that night. There was no light, of course?”
“No, sir. There wasn't a light anywhere in the building, that night. I
made the constable look up his notebook.”
“Then you've caught Master Silverdale in a very bad lie. By the way, I
suppose you noticed that girl who came into his room while we were
talking to him: the Miss Deepcar who dined with him down town that
night. What did you make of her?”
“Pretty girl, sir, very pretty indeed. The quiet sort, I'd judge. One
of the kind that a man might do a good deal to get hold of, if he was
keen on her.”
Sir Clinton's expression showed that he did not disagree with the
Inspector's summing up.
“By the way,” he continued, “did you take any note of what she said to
Silverdale at that time?”
“Not particularly, sir. It was all Greek to me—too technical.”
“It interested me, though,” Sir Clinton confessed. “I've a chemical
friend—the London man who's going to act as a check on Markfield for
us in the search for the poison, as a matter of fact—and he talks to
me occasionally about chemistry. You don't know what a ‘mixed
melting-point’ is, I suppose?”
“No, sir. It sounds confused,” said the Inspector mischievously.
The Chief Constable treated this as beneath contempt.
“I'll explain the point,” he pursued, “and then you'll know as much as
I do. A pure substance melts at a higher temperature than it does when
it's contaminated by even a trace of some foreign material. Suppose
that you had been given a stuff which you thought was pure quinine and
you had no chemicals handy to do the ordinary tests for quinine. What
you'd do would be this. You'd take the melting-point of your sample
first of all. Then to the sample you'd add a trace of something which
you knew definitely was quinine—a specimen from your laboratory stock,
say. Then you'd take the melting-point of this mixture. Suppose the
second melting-point is lower than the first, then obviously you've
been adding an impurity to your original sample. And since something,
that you know definitely to be quinine, has acted as an impurity, then
clearly the original stuff isn't quinine. On the other hand, if the
addition of your trace of quinine to the sample doesn't lower the
melting-point, then your original sample is proved to be quinine also.
That mixing of the two stuffs and taking the melting-point is what
they call ‘taking a mixed melting-point.’ Does that convey anything to
you?”
“Not a damn, sir,” Flamborough admitted crudely, in a tone of despair.
“Could you say it all over again slowly?”
“It's hardly worth while at this stage,” Sir Clinton answered,
dismissing the subject. “I'll take it up again with you later on,
perhaps, after we get the P.M. results. It was an illuminating
conversation, though, Inspector, if my guess turns out to be right.
Now there's another matter. Have you any idea when the morning papers
get into the hands of the public—I mean the earliest hour that's
likely in the normal course?”
“It happens that I do know that, sir. The local delivery starts at 7
a.m. In the suburbs, it's a bit later, naturally.”
“Just make sure about it, please. Ring up the publishing departments
of the _Courier_ and the _Gazette_. You needn't worry about the
imported London papers.”
“Very good, sir. And now about this journal, sir?” the Inspector added
with a touch of genial impishness in his voice.
“Evidently you won't be happy till I look at it,” Sir Clinton grumbled
with obvious distaste for the task. “Let's get it over, then, since
you're set on the matter.”
“So far as I can see, sir,” Flamborough explained, “there are only
three threads in it that concern us: the affair he had with that girl
Hailsham; his association with Mrs. Silverdale; and his financial
affairs—which came as a surprise to me, I must admit.”
Sir Clinton glanced up at the Inspector's words; but without replying,
he drew the fat volumes of the journal towards him and began his
examination of the passages to which Flamborough's red markers drew
attention.
“He didn't model his style on Pepys, evidently,” he said as he turned
the leaves rapidly, “There seems to be about ten per cent. of ‘I's’ on
every page. Ah! Here's your first red marker.”
He read the indicated passage carefully.
“This is the description of his feelings on getting engaged to Norma
Hailsham,” he commented aloud. “It sounds rather superior, as if he
felt he'd conferred a distinct favour on her in the matter.
Apparently, even in the first flush of young love, he thought that he
wasn't getting all that his merits deserved. I don't think Miss
Hailsham would have been flattered if she'd been able to read this at
the time.”
He passed rapidly over some other passages without audible comment,
and then halted for a few moments at an entry.
“Now we come to his meeting with Mrs. Silverdale, and his first
impressions of her. It seems that she attracted him by her physique
rather than by her brains. Of course, as he observes: ‘What single
woman could fully satisfy all the sides of a complex nature like
mine?’ However, he catalogues Mrs. Silverdale's attractions lavishly
enough.”
Flamborough, with a recollection of the passage in his mind, smiled
cynically.
“That side of his complex nature was highly developed, I should
judge,” he affirmed. “It runs through the stuff from start to finish.”
Sir Clinton turned over a few more pages.
“It seems as though Miss Hailsham began to have some inklings of his
troubles,” he said, looking up from the book. “This is the bit where
he's complaining about the limitations in women's outlooks, you
remember. Apparently he'd made his fiancée feel that his vision took a
wider sweep than she imagined, and she seems to have suggested that he
needn't spend so much time in staring at Mrs. Silverdale. It's quite
characteristic that in this entry he's suddenly discovered that the
Hailsham girl's hands fail to reach the standard of beauty which he
thinks essential in a life-companion. He has visions of sitting in
suppressed irritation while these hands pour out his breakfast coffee
every day through all the years of marriage. It seems to worry him
quite a lot.”
“You'll find that kind of thing developing as you go on, sir. The
plain truth is that he was tiring of the girl and he simply jotted
down everything he could see in her that he didn't find good enough
for him.”
Sir Clinton glanced over the next few entries.
“So I see, Inspector. Now it seems her dancing isn't so good as he
used to think it was.”
“Any stick to beat a dog with,” the Inspector surmised.
“Now they seem to have got the length of a distinct tiff, and he
rushes at once to jot down a few bright thoughts on jealousy with a
quotation from Mr. Wells in support of his thesis. It appears that
this ‘entanglement,’ as he calls it, is cramping his individuality and
preventing the full self-expression of his complex nature. I can't
imagine how we got along without that word ‘self-expression’ when we
were young. It's a godsend. I trust the inventor got a medal.”
“The next entry's rather important, sir,” Flamborough warned him.
“Ah! Here we are. We come to action for a change instead of all this
wash of talk. This is the final burst-up, eh? H'm!”
He read over the entry thoughtfully.
“Well, the Hailsham girl seems to have astonished him when it came to
the pinch. Even deducting everything for his way of looking at things,
she must have been fairly furious. And Yvonne Silverdale's name seems
to have entered pretty deeply into the discussion. ‘She warned me she
knew more than I thought she did; and that she'd make me pay for what
I was doing.’ And again: ‘She said she'd stick at nothing to get even
with me.’ It seems to have been rather a vulgar scene, altogether.
‘She wasn't going to be thrown over for that woman without having her
turn when it came.’ You know, Inspector, it sounds a bit vindictive,
even when it's filtered through him into his journal. The woman
scorned, and hell let loose, eh? I'm not greatly taken with the
picture of Miss Hailsham.”
“A bit of a virago,” the Inspector agreed. “What I was wondering when
I read that stuff was whether she'd keep up to that standard
permanently or whether this was just a flash in the pan. If she's the
kind that treasures grievances. . . .”
“She might be an important piece in the jigsaw, you mean? In any case,
I suppose we'll have to get her sized up somehow, since she plays a
part in the story.”
The Chief Constable turned back to the journal and skimmed over a
number of the entries.
“Do you know,” he pointed out after a time, “that young fellow had an
unpleasant mind.”
“You surprise me,” the Inspector retorted ironically. “I suppose
you've come to the place where he gets really smitten with Mrs.
Silverdale's charms?”
“Yes. There's a curious rising irritation through it all. It's evident
that she led him on, and then let him down, time after time.”
“For all his fluff about his complex character and so forth, he really
seems to have been very simple,” was Flamborough's verdict. “She led
him a dance for months; and anyone with half an eye could see all
along that she was only playing with him. It's as plain as print, even
in his own account of the business.”
“Quite, I admit. But you must remember that he imagined he was out of
the common—irresistible. He couldn't bring himself to believe things
were as they were.”
“Turn to the later entries,” the Inspector advised; and Sir Clinton
did so.
“This is the one you mean? Where she turned him down quite bluntly, so
that even he got an inkling of how matters really stood?”
“Yes. Now go on from there,” Flamborough directed.
Sir Clinton passed from one red marker to the other, reading the
entries indicated at each of the points.
“The tune changes a bit; and his irritation seems to be on the
up-grade. One gets the impression that he's casting round for a fresh
method of getting his way and that he hasn't found one that will do?
Is that your reading of it?”
“Yes,” Flamborough confirmed. “He talks about getting his way ‘by hook
or by crook,’ and one or two other phrases that come to the same
thing.”
“Well, that brings us up to a week ago. There seems to be a change in
his tone, now. More expectation and less exasperation, if one can put
it that way.”
“I read it that by that time he'd hit on his plan. He was sure of its
success, sir. Just go on to the next entry please. There's something
there about his triumph, as he calls it.”
Sir Clinton glanced down the page and as he did so his face lit up for
a moment as though he had seen one of his inferences confirmed.
“This what you mean?” he asked. “‘And only I shall know of my
triumph’?”
“That's it, sir. High-falutin and all that; but it points to his
thinking he had the game in his hands. I've puzzled my brains a bit
over what he really meant by it, though. One might read it that he
meant to murder the girl in the end. That would leave him as the only
living person who knew what had happened, you see?”
“I'm not in a position to contradict that assumption,” Sir Clinton
confessed. “But so far as that goes, I think you'll find the point
cleared up in a day or two at the rate we're going.”
“You're very optimistic, sir,” was all the Inspector found to reply.
“Now I've left one matter to the end, because it may have no bearing
on the case at all. The last year of that journal is full of groans
about his finances. He seems to have spent a good deal more than he
could afford, in one way and another. I've noted all the passages if
you want to read them, sir. They're among the set marked with white
slips.”
“Just give me the gist of them,” the Chief Constable suggested. “From
that, I can see whether I want to wade through the whole thing or
not.”
“It's simple enough, sir. He's been borrowing money on a scale that
would be quite big for his resources. And I gather from some of the
entries that he had no security that he could produce. It seems he
daren't go to his uncle and ask him to use his capital as security—I
mean young Hassendean's own capital which was under his uncle's
control as trustee. So he was persuaded to insure his life in favour
of his creditor for a good round sum—figure not mentioned.”
“So in the present circumstances the moneylender will rake in the
whole sum insured, after paying only a single premium?”
“Unless the insurance company can prove suicide.”
Sir Clinton closed the last volume of the journal.
“I've heard of that sort of insurance racket before. And of course you
remember that shooting affair in Scotland thirty years ago when the
prosecution made a strong point out of just this very type of
transaction. Have you had time to make any inquiries along that line
yet?”
Flamborough was evidently glad to get the opportunity of showing his
efficiency.
“I took it up at once, sir. In one entry, he mentioned the name of the
company: the Western Medical and Mercantile Assurance Co. I put a
trunk call through to their head office and got the particulars of the
policy. It's for £5,000 and it's in favour of Dudley Amyas Guisborough
& Co.—the moneylender.”
“Sounds very aristocratic,” the Chief Constable commented.
“Oh, that's only his trade sign. His real name's Spratton.”
“No claim been made yet?”
“No, sir. I don't suppose he's hurrying. The inquest was adjourned,
you remember; and until they bring in some verdict excluding suicide,
Spratton can't do much. There's a suicide clause in the policy, I
learned. But if it pans out as a murder, then Spratton's £5,000 in
pocket.”
“In fact, Inspector, Mr. Justice is doing a very good bit of work for
Dudley Amyas Guisborough & Co.”
Flamborough seemed struck by an idea.
“I'll go and pay a call on Mr. Spratton, I think. I'll do it now.”
“Oh, he's a local light, is he?”
“Yes, sir. He was mixed up in a case last year. You won't remember it,
though. It never came to much. Just an old man who fell into
Spratton's hands and was driven to suicide by the damnable rapacity of
that shark. Inspector Ferryside had to look into the matter, and I
remember talking over the case with him. That's how it sticks in my
memory.”
“Well, see what you can make of him, Inspector. But I shan't be
disappointed if you come back empty-handed. Even if he were mixed up
in this affair, he'll have taken good care not to leave a straight
string leading back to his front door. If it was a case of murder for
profit, you know, there would be plenty of time to draw up a pretty
good scheme beforehand. It wouldn't be done on the spur of the
moment.”