her yourself, Fortune.”
“Yes. There’s quite a lot of things I’d like to ask her,” said
Reggie, and conversation languished. Even the elaborate lunch which
Reggie insisted on eating in Colchester did not revive it, for Lomas
was fretful at the delay. So at last, with Reggie somnolent and Lomas
feverish, the car drew up at the ancient inn of the village of Baldon.
A young fellow who was drinking ginger-beer in the porch looked up
and came to meet them. “She’s done a bunk, sir,” he said in a low
voice. “She and her Mr. Smith went off half an hour ago. Some luggage
in the car. Took the London road.”
“My poor Lomas!” Reggie chuckled.
“Damme, we must have passed them on the road,” Lomas cried. “Any idea
why she went, Blakiston?”
“No, sir. The man went into Ipswich in their car this morning. Soon
after he came back, they bolted together. I couldn’t do anything, you
know, sir.”
“You’re sure Mrs. Smith is Miss Sheridan?”
“I’d swear to her, sir.”
“It’s damned awkward,” Lomas frowned. “Sorry, Fortune. We’d better be
off back.”
“I want my tea,” said Reggie firmly, and got out: and vainly Lomas
followed to protest that after the Colchester lunch he could want no
more to eat for twenty-four hours. He was already negotiating for
cream. “If it hadn’t been for your confounded lunch we should have
caught her,” Lomas grumbled. “Now she’s off into the blue again.”
Reggie fell into the window seat and took up the local paper. “And
where is he that knows?” he murmured. “From the great deep to the
great deep she goes. But why? Assumin’ for the sake of argument that
she is our leading lady, why does she make this hurried exit?”
“How the devil should I know?”
Reggie smiled at him over the top of the papers. “This is a very
interestin’ journal,” he remarked. “Do you know what it is, Lomas?
It’s the Ipswich evening paper with the 2.30 winner. Were you backing
anything? No? Well, well. Not a race for a careful man. I read also
that Miss Darcourt’s chauffeur was brought up before the Stanton
magistrates this morning and Miss Darcourt jumped into the river last
night. It makes quite a lot of headlines. The Press is a great power,
Lomas.”
Lomas damned the Press.
“You’re so old-fashioned,” Reggie said sadly. “My child, don’t you
see? Mr. Smith went to Ipswich, Mr. Smith read the early evening
paper and hustled back to tell Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Smith felt that
duty called her. Assuming that Mrs. Smith is our Sylvia, where would
it call her? Back to Stanton, to clear up the mess.”
“I suppose so,” said Lomas drearily. “She can go to the devil for me.”
“My dear chap, you do want your tea,” said Reggie. Then Lomas swore.
It was late that night when a dusty car driven by Mr. Fortune
approached the lights of Stanton. Mr. Fortune turned away from the
bridge down a leafy byway and drew up with a jerk. Another car was
standing by Miss Sheridan’s gate. The man in it turned to stare.
Reggie was already at his side. “Mr. Smith, I presume?” he said.
“Who the devil are you?” said a voice that seemed to him familiar.
The night was then rent by a scream, which resolved itself into a cry
of “Thieves! Help, help! Police!” It came from the house.
Reggie made for the door and banged upon it. It was opened by an
oldish woman in disarray. “We’ve got burglars,” she cried. “Come in,
sir, come in.”
“Rather,” said Mr. Fortune. “Where are they?”
“On the stair, sir. I hit him. I know I hit one. It give me such a
turn.”
Reggie ran upstairs. The light was on in the hall, but on the
landing, in the shadow, he stumbled over something soft. He ran his
hand along the wall for a switch and found it. What he saw was Sylvia
Sheridan lying with blood upon her face.
“It’s all right. You’ve only knocked out your mistress,” he called
over the stairs.
“Oh, my God!” the housekeeper gasped. “The poker on her poor head!
Oh, sir, she’s not dead, is she?”
“Not a bit. Come along, where’s her room?” Reggie picked her up.
The man from the car was at his elbow. “Thank you, I’ll do that,” he
said.
“Why, it’s Mr. Woodcote. Fancy that!” Reggie smiled. “But why should
the dramatist carry the leading lady?”
“I’m her husband,” said Woodcote fiercely. “Any objection, Mr.
Fortune?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Smith. I beg pardon, Mr. Woodcote. But you’ll want me,
you know. If it’s only to sew her up.”
He bore the lady off to her bedroom.
* * * * *
The case ended as it began, with a morning voyage in a punt. Lomas
brought that craft in to the landing-stage and embarked Reggie, who
laid himself down on the cushions elaborately and sighed. “My dear
fellow, I know you were always a lady’s man,” Lomas remonstrated.
“But you’re overdoing it. You’re enfeebled. You wilt.”
Reggie moaned gently. “I know it. I feel like a curate, Lomas. They
coo over me. It’s weakening to the intellect. Rose holds my hand and
tells me she’s sorry she was so naughty, and Sylvia looks tenderly
from her unbandaged eye and says she’ll never do it again.”
“Have you got anything rational out of them?”
“I have it all. It’s quite simple. Sylvia heard that Rose was trying
to do her out of the part. She was pained. She went round in a hurry
to talk to Rose. In the garden she saw Albert Edward, the chauffeur,
who told her that Rose was on the boat-house balcony, her favourite
place on a fine evening. Sylvia went there straight. Hence none of
the servants but Albert Edward knew that Sylvia had called that
night. Sylvia and Rose had words. Sylvia says she offered Rose quite
a good minor part. Rose says Sylvia insulted her. I fear that Rose
tried to slap her face. Anyway, Sylvia tumbled down the boat-house
steps and there was a splash. Rose heard it and thought Sylvia had
gone in and was delighted. Albert Edward heard it as he had heard the
row, and thought something could be done about it. But he saw Sylvia
rush off rather draggled round the skirts, and knew she wasn’t
drowned. Rose didn’t take the trouble to see Sylvia scramble out. She
was too happy. Sylvia was annoyed, but she has an ingenious mind. It
occurred to her that if she did a disappearance Rose would get the
wind up badly and it would be a howling advertisement for Miss Sylvia
Sheridan and Woodcote’s new play. Yes, Lomas dear, you were quite
right. Only Bell was too. Sylvia scurried off to London and let
herself into her flat and telephoned to Woodcote and told him all
about it. He was badly gone on Sylvia before. He gave way to his
emotions and those two geese arranged their elopement that night. She
went off at break of day and he got a special licence. Meanwhile
Albert Edward was getting busy. He collected the cigarette-case from
the boat-house first thing in the morning, he found out Sylvia hadn’t
gone home and he started blackmailing Rose. That was why we saw her
looking desperate. She got more and more funky, she paid that bright
lad all the money she could spare (the clean notes) and most of her
jewellery (the pawn-tickets). The only thing that worried Albert
Edward was when Sylvia would turn up again. Hence that interest in
the parlourmaid which gave him away. Poor Rose tried to drown her
sorrows in morphia, and when she found Albert Edward was in the
cells, she wanted to go under quiet and quick.”
“I have a mild, manly longing to smack Sylvia,” said Lomas.
“Well, well. The housekeeper did that. With a poker,” Reggie
murmured. “Life is quite just to the wicked. But wearing to the
virtuous. I am much worn, Lomas. I want my lunch.”
CASE VII
THE UNKNOWN MURDERER
ONCE upon a time a number of men in a club discussed how Mr. Reginald
Fortune came to be the expert adviser of the Home Office upon crime.
The doctors admitted that though he is a competent surgeon,
pathologist and what not, he never showed international form. There
was a Fellow of the Royal Society who urged that Fortune knew more
about natural science than most schoolboys, politicians and civil
servants. An artist said he had been told Fortune understood
business, and his banker believed Fortune was a judge of old
furniture. But they all agreed that he is a jolly good fellow. Which
means, being interpreted, he can be all things to all men.
Mr. Fortune himself is convinced that he was meant by Providence to
be a general practitioner: to attend to my lumbago and your
daughter’s measles. He has been heard to complain of the chance that
has made him, knowing something of everything, nothing completely,
into a specialist. His only qualification, he will tell you, is that
he doesn’t get muddled.
There you have it, then. He is singularly sensitive to people. “Very
odd how he knows men,” said Superintendent Bell reverently. “As if he
had an extra sense to tell him of people’s souls, like smells or
colours.” And he has a clear head. He is never confused about what is
important and what isn’t, and he has never been known to hesitate in
doing what is necessary.
Consider his dealing with the affair of the unknown murderer.
There was not much interesting crime that Christmas. The singular
case of Sir Humphrey Bigod, who was found dead in a chalkpit on the
eve of his marriage, therefore obtained a lot of space in the papers,
which kept it up, even after the coroner’s jury had declared for
death by misadventure, with irrelevant inventions and bloodthirsty
hints of murder and tales of clues. This did not disturb the peace of
the scientific adviser to the Criminal Investigation Department, who
knew that the lad was killed by a fall and that there was no means of
knowing any more. Mr. Fortune was much occupied in being happy, for
after long endeavour he had engaged Joan Amber to marry him. The lady
has said the endeavour was hers, but I am not now telling that story.
Just after Christmas she took him to the children’s party at the Home
of Help.
It is an old-fashioned orphanage, a huge barrack of a building, but
homely and kind. Time out of mind people of all sorts, with old
titles and new, with money and with brains, have been the friends of
its children. When Miss Amber brought Reggie Fortune under the flags
and the strings of paper roses into its hall, which was as noisy as
the parrot house, he gasped slightly. “Be brave, child,” she said.
“This is quiet to what it will be after tea. And cool. You will be
much hotter. You don’t know how hot you’ll be.”
“Woman, you have deceived me,” said Mr. Fortune bitterly. “I thought
philanthropists were respectable.”
“Yes, dear. Don’t be frightened. You’re only a philanthropist for the
afternoon.”
“I ask you. Is that Crab Warnham?”
“Of course it’s Captain Warnham.” Miss Amber smiled beautifully at a
gaunt man with a face like an old jockey. He flushed as he leered
back. “Do you know his wife? She’s rather precious.”
“Poor woman. He doesn’t look comfortable here, does he? The last time
I saw Crab Warnham was in a place that’s several kinds of hell in
Berlin. He was quite at home there.”
“Forget it,” said Miss Amber gently. “You will when you meet his
wife. And their boy’s a darling.”
“His boy?” Reggie was startled.
“Oh, no. She was a widow. He worships her and the child.”
Reggie said nothing. It appeared to him that Captain Warnham, for a
man who worshipped his wife, had a hungry eye on women. And the next
moment Captain Warnham was called to attention. A small woman, still
pretty though earnest, talked to him like a mother or a commanding
officer. He was embarrassed, and when she had done with him he fled.
The small woman, who was austerely but daintily clad in black with
some white at the neck, continued to flit among the company, finding
everyone a job of work. “She says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to
another, Come, and he cometh. And who is she, Joan?”
“Lady Chantry,” said Miss Amber. “She’s providence here, you know.”
And Lady Chantry was upon them. Reggie found himself looking down
into a pair of uncommonly bright eyes and wondering what it felt like
to be as strenuous as the little woman who was congratulating him on
Joan, thanking him for being there and arranging his afternoon for
him all in one breath. He had never heard anyone talk so fast. In a
condition of stupor he saw Joan reft from him to tell the story of
Cinderella to magic lantern pictures in one dormitory, while he was
led to another to help in a scratch concert. And as the door closed
on him he heard the swift clear voice of Lady Chantry exhorting staff
and visitors to play round games.
He suffered. People who had no voices sang showy songs, people who
had too much voice sang ragtime to those solemn, respectful children.
In pity for the children and himself he set up as a conjurer, and the
dormitory was growing merry when a shriek cut into his patter.
“That’s only my bones creaking,” he went on quickly, for the children
were frightened; “they always do that when I put the knife in at the
ear and take it out of my hind leg. So. But it doesn’t hurt. As the
motor-car said when it ran over the policeman’s feet. All done by
kindness. Come here, Jenny Wren. You mustn’t use your nose as a
money-box.” A small person submitted to have pennies taken out of her
face.
The door opened and a pallid nurse said faintly: “The doctor. Are you
the doctor?”
“Of course,” said Reggie. “One moment, people. Mr. Punch has fallen
over the baby. It always hurts him. In the hump. Are we down-hearted?
No. Pack up your troubles in the old kit bag----” He went out to a
joyful roar of that lyric. “What’s the trouble?” The nurse was
shaking.
“In there, sir--she’s up there.”
Reggie went up the stairs in quick time. The door of a little
sitting-room stood open. Inside it people were staring at a woman who
sat at her desk. Her dress was dark and wet. Her head lolled forward.
A deep gash ran across her throat.
“Yes. There’s too many of us here,” he said, and waved the spectators
away. One lingered, an old woman, large and imposing, and announced
that she was the matron. Reggie shut the door and came back to the
body in the chair. He held the limp hands a moment, he lifted the
head and looked close into the flaccid face. “When was she found?
When I heard that scream? Yes.” He examined the floor. “Quite so.” He
turned to the matron. “Well, well. Who is she?”
“It’s our resident medical officer, Dr. Emily Hall. But Dr. Fortune,
can’t you do anything?”
“She’s gone,” said Reggie.
“But this is terrible, doctor. What does it mean?”
“Well, I don’t know what it means. Her throat was cut by a highly
efficient knife, probably from behind. She lingered a little while
quite helpless, and died. Not so very long ago. Who screamed?”
“The nurse who found her. One of our own girls, Dr. Fortune, Edith
Baker. She was always a favourite of poor Dr. Hall’s. She has been
kept on here at Dr. Hall’s wish to train as a nurse. She was devoted
to Dr. Hall. One of these girlish passions.”
“And she came into the room and found--this--and screamed?”
“So she tells me,” said the matron.
“Well, well,” Reggie sighed. “Poor kiddies! And now you must send for
the police.”
“I have given instructions, Dr. Fortune,” said the matron with
dignity.
“And I think you ought to keep Edith Baker from talking about it.”
Reggie opened the door.
“Edith will not talk,” said the matron coldly. “She is a very
reserved creature.”
“Poor thing. But I’m afraid some of our visitors will. And they had
better not, you know.” At last he got rid of the lady and turned the
key in the lock and stood looking at it. “Yes, quite natural, but
very convenient,” said he, and turned away from it and contemplated a
big easy chair. The loose cushion on the seat showed that somebody
had been sitting in it, a fact not in itself remarkable. But there
was a tiny smear of blood on the arm still wet. He picked up the
cushion. On the under side was a larger smear of blood. Mr. Fortune’s
brow contracted. “The unknown murderer cuts her throat--comes over
here--makes a mess on the chair--turns the cushion over--and sits
down--to watch the woman die. This is rather diabolical.” He began to
wander round the room. It offered him no other signs but some drops
of blood on the hearthrug and the hearth. He knelt down and peered
into the fire, and with the tongs drew from it a thin piece of metal.
It was a surgical knife. He looked at the dead woman. “From your
hospital equipment, Dr. Hall. And Edith Baker is a nurse. And Edith
Baker had ‘a girlish passion’ for you. I wonder.”
Some one was trying the door. He unlocked it, to find an inspector of
police. “I am Reginald Fortune,” he explained. “Here’s your case.”
“I’ve heard of you, sir,” said the inspector reverently. “Bad
business, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s very lucky you were here.”
“I wonder,” Reggie murmured.
“Could it be suicide, sir?”
Reggie shook his head. “I wish it could. Not a nice murder. Not at
all a nice murder. By the way, there’s the knife. I picked it out of
the fire.”
“Doctor’s tool, isn’t it, sir? Have you got any theory about it?”
Reggie shook his head. “There’s the girl who gave the alarm: she’s a
nurse in the hospital, I’m told.”
“I don’t know the girl,” said Reggie. “You’d better see what you make
of the room. I shall be downstairs.”
In the big hall the decorations and the Christmas tree with its
ungiven presents glowed to emptiness and silence. Joan Amber came
forward to meet him. He did not speak to her. He continued to stare
at the ungiven presents on the Christmas tree. “What do you want to
do?” she said at last.
“This is the end of a perfect day,” said Mr. Fortune. “Poor kiddies.”
“The matron packed them all off to their dormitories.”
Mr. Fortune laughed. “Just as well to rub it in, isn’t it?”
Miss Amber did not answer him for a moment. “Do you know, you look
rather terrible?” she said, and indeed his normally plump,
fresh-coloured, cheery face had a certain ferocity.
“I feel like a fool, Joan. Where is everybody?”
“She sent everybody away too.”
“She would. Great organizer. No brain. My only aunt! A woman’s
murdered and every stranger who was in the place is hustled off
before the police get to work. This isn’t a crime, it’s a nightmare.”
“Well, of course they were anxious to go.”
“They would be.”
“Reggie, who are you thinking of?”
“I can’t think. There are no facts. Where’s this matron now?”
The inspector came upon them as they were going to her room. “I’ve
finished upstairs, sir. Not much for me, is there? Plenty downstairs,
though. I reckon I’ll hear some queer stories before I’ve done. These
homes are always full of gossip. People living too close together,
wonderful what bad blood it makes. I----” He broke off and stared at
Reggie. From the matron’s room came the sound of sobbing. He opened
the door without a knock.
The matron sat at her writing-table, coldly judicial. A girl in
nurse’s uniform was crying on the bosom of Lady Chantry, who caressed
her and murmured in her ear.
“Sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” the inspector said, staring hard.
“You don’t interrupt. This girl is Edith Baker, who seems to have
been the last person who saw Dr. Hall alive and was certainly the
first person who saw her dead.”
“And who was very, very fond of her,” Lady Chantry said gently.
“Weren’t you, dear?”
“I’ll have to take her statement,” said the inspector. But the girl
was torn with sobbing.
“Come, dear, come.” Lady Chantry strove with her. “The Inspector only
wants you to say how you left her and how you found her.”
“Edith, you must control yourself.” The matron lifted her voice.
“I hate you,” the girl cried, and tore herself away and rushed out of
the room.
“She’ll have to speak, you know, ma’am,” the inspector said.
“I am very sorry to say she has always had a passionate temperament,”
said the matron.
“Poor child!” Lady Chantry rose. “She was so fond of the doctor, you
see. I’ll go to her, matron, and see what I can do.”
“Does anyone here know what the girl was up to this afternoon,
ma’am?” said the inspector.
“I will try to find out for you,” said the matron, and rang her bell.
“Well, well,” said Reggie Fortune. “Every little helps. You might
find out what all the other people were doing this afternoon.”
The matron stared at him. “Surely you’re not thinking of the
visitors, Mr. Fortune?”
“I’m thinking of your children,” said Reggie, and she was the more
amazed. “Not a nice murder, you know, not at all a nice murder.”
And then he took Miss Amber home. She found him taciturn, which is
his habit when he is angry. But she had never seen him angry before.
She is a wise woman. When he was leaving her: “Do you know what it is
about you, sir?” she said. “You’re always just right.”
When the Hon. Sidney Lomas came to his room in Scotland Yard the next
morning, Reggie Fortune was waiting for him. “My dear fellow!” he
protested. “What is this? You’re not really up, are you? It’s not
eleven. You’re an hallucination.”
“Zeal, all zeal, Lomas. The orphanage murder is my trouble.”
“Have you come to give yourself up? I suspected you from the first,
Fortune. Where is it?” He took a copy of the “Daily Wire” from the
rack. “Yes. ‘Dr. Reginald Fortune, the eminent surgeon, was attending
the function and was able to give the police a first-hand account of
the crime. Dr. Fortune states that the weapon used was a surgical
knife.’ My dear fellow, the case looks black indeed.”
Reggie was not amused. “Yes. I also was present. And several others,”
he said. “Do you know anything about any of us?”
Lomas put up his eyeglass. “There’s a certain bitterness about you,
Fortune. This is unusual. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t like this murder,” said Reggie. “It spoilt the children’s
party.”
“That would be a by-product,” Lomas agreed. “You’re getting very
domestic in your emotions. Oh, I like it, my dear fellow. But it
makes you a little irrelevant.”
“Domestic be damned. I’m highly relevant. It spoilt the children’s
party. Why did it happen at the children’s party? Lots of other nice
days to kill the resident medical officer.”
“You’re suggesting it was one of the visitors?”
“No, no. It isn’t the only day visitors visit. I’m suggesting life is
real, life is earnest--and rather diabolical sometimes.”
“I’ll call for the reports,” Lomas said, and did so. “Good Gad!
Reams! Barton’s put in some heavy work.”
“I thought he would,” said Reggie, and went to read over Lomas’s
shoulder.
At the end Lomas lay back and looked up at him. “Well? Barton’s put
his money on this young nurse, Edith Baker.”
“Yes. That’s the matron’s tip. I saw the matron. One of the world’s
organizers, Lomas. A place for everything and everything in its
place. And if you don’t fit, God help you. Edith Baker didn’t fit.
Edith Baker has emotions. Therefore she does murders. Q.E.D.”
“Well, the matron ought to know the girl.”
“She ought,” Reggie agreed. “And our case is, gentlemen, that the
matron who ought to know girls says Edith Baker isn’t a nice young
person. Lomas dear, why do policemen always believe what they’re
told? What the matron don’t like isn’t evidence.”
“There is some evidence. The girl had one of these hysterical
affections for the dead woman, passionately devoted and passionately
jealous and so forth. The girl had access to the hospital
instruments. All her time in the afternoon can’t be accounted for,
and she was the first to know of the murder.”
“It’s not good enough, Lomas. Why did she give the alarm?”
Lomas shrugged. “A murderer does now and then. Cunning or fright.”
“And why did she wait for the children’s party to do the murder?”
“Something may have happened there to rouse her jealousy.”
“Something with one of the visitors?” Reggie suggested. “I wonder.”
And then he laughed. “A party of the visitors went round the
hospital, Lomas. They had access to the surgical instruments.”
“And were suddenly seized with a desire for homicide? They also went
to the gymnasium and the kitchen. Did any of them start boiling
potatoes? My dear Fortune, you are not as plausible as usual.”
“It isn’t plausible,” Reggie said. “I know that. It’s too dam’
wicked.”
“Abnormal,” Lomas nodded. “Of course the essence of the thing is that
it’s abnormal. Every once in a while we have these murders in an
orphanage or school or some place where women and children are herded
together. Nine times out of ten they are cases of hysteria. Your
young friend Miss Baker seems to be a highly hysterical subject.”
“You know more than I do.”
“Why, that’s in the evidence. And you saw her yourself half crazy
with emotion after the murder.”