The Crooked Hinge Page 8

  He opened his notebook.

  “Statement of Lady Farnleigh: When we left the library I was upset, so I went upstairs to my bedroom. My husband and I have adjoining bedrooms on the first floor of the new wing, over the dining-room. I washed my face and hands. I told my maid to lay out another frock, because I felt grubby. I lay down on the bed. There was only a very small light from the bedside lamp. The windows were open on the balcony of my room overlooking the garden. I heard noises like a fight and a scuffling and a kind of cry, and then a splash. I ran to the balcony and saw my husband. He seemed to be lying in the pool and fighting. He was alone then. I could see this clearly. I ran downstairs by the main staircase, and out to him. I did not see or hear anything suspicious in the garden.

  “Next we have:

  “Statement of Kennet Murray: I remained in the library between nine-twenty and nine-thirty. No one entered the room, and I saw no one else. My back was to the window. I heard the sounds (similarly described). I did not think anything serious had happened until I heard someone run downstairs in the hall. I heard Lady Farnleigh’s voice calling out to the butler that she was afraid something had happened to Sir John. I looked at my watch; it was then just nine-thirty. I joined Lady Farnleigh in the hall, and we went out into the garden, where we found a man with his throat cut. I have no comment to make at this time on the fingerprints or my comparisons of them.

  “Fine and helpful, isn’t it? Then we have:

  “Statement of Patrick Gore, claimant: I wandered. I was out on the front lawn first, smoking. Then I wandered round the south side of the house to this garden. I did not hear any sounds except a splash, and I heard that very faintly. I think I heard this when I had just started round the side of the house. I did not think anything was wrong. When I came into the garden I heard loud voices talking. I did not want any company, so I kept to the side path along the high yew hedge bounding the garden. Then I heard what they were talking about. I listened. I did not go to the pool until all of them except a man named Page had gone back to the house.

  “Finally, we come to:

  “Statement of Harold Welkyn: I remained in the dining-room and did not leave it at any time. I ate five small sandwiches and drank a glass of port. I agree that the dining-room has glass doors opening out into the garden, and that one of these doors is not far from the pool in a straight line. But the lights were full on in the dining-room, and I could not see anything in the garden because of the contrasting lights—

  “A witness dead on the scene. Ground floor: hedges only waist-high: not more than twenty feet from where Farnleigh must have been standing,” said Elliot, flicking his notebook with finger and thumb. “But he’s deaf and blind in his ‘contrasting lights.’ He concludes:

  “At nine thirty-one by the grandfather clock in the diningroom I heard certain noises resembling a scuffle and a stopped cry. This was followed by a series of loud splashings. I also heard a kind of rustling noise in the hedges or shrubbery, and I thought I saw something looking at me through one of the glass panels of the door, one of the panels down nearest the ground. I was afraid that certain things might have happened which were no affair of mine. I sat down and waited until Mr. Burrows came in and told me the fraudulent Sir John Farnleigh had committed suicide. During this time I did not do anything except eat another sandwich.”

  Dr. Fell, wheezing into a more upright position, reached out after the tankard of ale and took a deep pull.

  There was a steady, gleaming excitement behind his eyeglasses, a sort of astonished pleasure.

  “Oh, Bacchus!” he said in a hollow voice. “ ‘Shorn’ statements, hey? Is that your considered opinion? There is something in our Mr. Welkyn’s statement which tends to give me a cauld grue. H’mf, ha, stop a bit. Welkyn! Welkyn! Haven’t I heard that name somewhere before? I’m certain of it, because it cries aloud for bad puns, and therefore it would stick in my— ‘What is mind?’ ‘No matter.’ ‘What is matter?’ ‘Never mind.’ I beg your pardon; I was scatter-braining again. Have you got anything else?”

  “Well, there were two other guests, Mr. Page here and Mr. Burrows. You’ve heard Mr. Page’s statement, and you’ve had the gist of Mr. Burrows’s.”

  “Never mind. Read it again, will you?”

  Inspector Elliot frowned.

  “Statement of Nathaniel Burrows: I could have eaten something, but Welkyn was in the dining-room and I did not think it proper for me to talk to him then. I went to the drawing-room at the other side of the house and waited. Then I thought that my proper place was with Sir John Farnleigh, who had gone out into the south garden. I took an electric torch out of the table in the hall. I did this because my eyesight is not good. As I was starting to open the door to the garden I saw Sir John. He was standing on the edge of the pool. He seemed to be doing something, or moving about a little. From the door to the nearer edge of the pool is about thirty-five feet. I heard the scuffling sounds, and then the splash and the churnings in water. I ran down there and found him. I am not able to swear whether or not there was anybody with him. I cannot give an exact description of the movements he made. It was as though something had got hold of his feet.

  “And there we are, sir. You notice certain things. Except Mr. Burrows, nobody ever actually saw the victim before he was attacked and fell or was thrown into the pool. Lady Farnleigh didn’t see him until he was in the pool; Mr. Gore, Mr. Murray, Mr. Welkyn, and Mr. Page didn’t see him until afterwards—or so they say. There are other things,” he prodded, “which you’ll have noticed?”

  “Eh?” said Dr. Fell vaguely.

  “I asked what you made of it.”

  “Why, I’ll tell you what I was thinking. ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot,’ ” said Dr. Fell. “But what about the sequel? After the murder, I gather, the Thumbograph was pinched from the library when Murray came out to see what was up. Did you get a statement from the various persons about what they were doing then, or who might have pinched it?”

  “I did,” said Elliot. “But I won’t read it to you, sir. And why? Because it’s one great, serene blank. Analyzed and boiled down, it amounts to this: that anybody might have stolen the Thumbograph, and that in the general confusion nobody would have noticed who did.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Dr. Fell groaned, after a pause. “We’ve got it at last.”

  “Got what?”

  “What I’ve been half-dreading for a long time—an almost purely psychological puzzle. There are no discrepancies in the various stories, in the various times given, even in the various possibilities. There are no incongruities to explain, except the thundering psychological incongruity of why the wrong man should have been so carefully murdered. Above all, there is an almost complete absence of material clues: no cuff-links, cigarette-ends, theatre-ticket-stubs, pens, ink, or paper. H’mf. Unless we get our claws into something more tangible, we shall merely fumble with the greased pig called human behavior. Which person, then, would be most likely to kill the man who was killed? And why? And which person fits best, psychologically, into the pattern of devilry you’ve drawn round Victoria Daly’s murder?”

  Elliot began to whistle through his teeth. He said: “Any ideas, sir?”

  “Let me see,” muttered Dr. Fell, “if I have mastered the essential facts in the case of Victoria Daly. Age 35, spinster, pleasant, not intelligent, lived alone. H’mf. Ha. Yes. Murdered about 11:45 PM on July 31st, last. Right, my lad?”

  “Right.”

  “Alarm given by farmer driving home past her cottage. Screams coming from there. Village policeman, passing on bicycle, follows farmer. Both see a man—tramp known in district—climbing out of window, ground-floor, rear. Both follow in quarter-mile chase. Tramp, trying to cut off pursuit by getting over gates and across tracks ahead of Southern Railway goods-train, is eliminated quickly if not neatly. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Miss Daly found in ground-floor room of cottage: her bedroom. Strangled with bootlace. When attacked, was retiring
but had not yet gone to bed. Wore nightdress, quilted dressing-gown, and slippers. Apparently clear case—money and valuables found on tramp—except for one fact. On examination by doctor, body found smeared with dark sooty compound; same compound also found under all finger-nails. Eh? This substance, analyzed by Home Office man, proved to be composed of juice of water parsnip, aconite, cinquefoil, deadly nightshade, and soot.”

  Page sat up, mentally stuttering. Until the last part of Dr. Fell’s statement, he had heard it all a thousand times before.

  “Here!” he protested. “That’s the first time anybody’s mentioned a thing like that. You found smeared on the body a substance containing two deadly poisons?”

  “Yes,” said Elliot, with a broad and sardonic grin. “The local doctor didn’t have it analyzed, of course. The coroner didn’t think it was important and didn’t even bring it up at the inquest. He probably thought it was some kind of beauty-preparation, which it would be indelicate to mention. But the doctor later passed on a quiet word, and______”

  Page was troubled. “Aconite and deadly nightshade! All the same, they weren’t swallowed, were they? They wouldn’t have killed her if they only touched her externally, would they?”

  “Oh, no. All the same, it’s a fairly clear case. Don’t you think so, sir?”

  “An unfortunately clear case,” admitted Dr. Fell.

  Above the noise of the rain Page heard a rapping at the front door of the cottage. Trying to place an elusive memory, he went out through the short passage and opened the door. It was Sergeant Burton of the local police, wearing a rubber hood and coat, under which he was shielding something wrapped in newspapers. What he said brought Page’s thoughts back from Victoria Daly to the closer problem of Farnleigh.

  “Might I see Inspector Elliot and Dr. Fell, sir?” Burton said. “I’ve got the weapon, right enough. And—”

  He gestured with his head. Beyond a muddy front garden pricked up into puddles by the rain, a familiar car stood by the front gate. It was an ancient Morris, and there seemed to be two persons behind the side-curtains. Inspector Elliot came to the door hurriedly.

  “You said­—?”

  “I’ve got the weapon that killed Sir John, Inspector. And something else too.” Again Sergeant Burton moved his head in the direction of the car. “It’s Miss Madeline Dane and old Mr. Knowles, who works up at the Close. He used to work for Miss Dane’s father’s best friend. When he wasn’t sure what to do he went to Miss Dane, and she sent him to me. He’s got something to tell you that’ll probably straighten out the whole case.”

  Chapter Eight

  THEY PUT DOWN THE newspaper-parcel on Page’s writing-table, and unfolded it to reveal the weapon. It was a pocket-knife; a boy’s pocket-knife of old-fashioned design; and, under the present circumstances, a heavy and murderous-looking pocket-knife.

  In addition to the main blade—which was open now—its wooden handle contained two smaller blades, a corkscrew, and an implement once alleged to be useful for removing stones from horses’ hoofs. To Page it brought back the days when to possess such a fine knife was the proud mark of almost-manhood: when you were an adventurer, almost a red Indian. It was an old knife. The main blade, well over four inches long, bore two deep triangular nicks, and the steel was ragged in places; but it was not rusty, and it had been kept razor-sharp. There was about it now no suggestion of playing at Indians. From point to handle the heavy blade was discolored with bloodstains which had recently dried.

  A feeling of uneasiness touched them all as they looked at it. Inspector Elliot straightened up.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “Stuck down deep inside one of those low hedges; about,” said Sergeant Burton, half-closing one eye to estimate, “about ten feet away from the lily-pond.”

  “Away from the pool in which direction?”

  “Towards the left, standing with your back to the house. Towards that high hedge that’s the south boundary. A bit nearer in to the house than the lily-pond is. You see, sir,” explained the sergeant carefully, “it was luck—me finding it. We might have searched for a month and never found it. No more we mightn’t, unless we pulled all the hedges to bits. That yew’s as thick as sin. It was the rain that did it. I was running my hand along the top of one hedge; not meaning anything, you understand; just wondering where to look. The hedge was wet, and my hand came away with a bit of reddy-brown color on it. That was where it’d left a bit of blood on the flat top of the hedge when it went through. You couldn’t even see the cut in the top where she’d gone through. I dug her out. The hedge kept the rain off, as you see.”

  “Somebody’d pushed it straight down through the hedge, you think?”

  Sergeant Burton considered.

  “Yes, it’d be that. I think. She was stuck in there straight, point downwards. Or else—that’s a good heavy knife, sir. Blade’s as heavy as the handle. If somebody threw her away, or up into the air, she’d have come down blade first and gone through just like that.”

  There was a certain look on Sergeant Burton’s face which no one there failed to interpret. Dr. Fell, who had been sunk in some obscure musing, rolled up his head; Dr. Fell’s large under-lip came out in a mutinous way.

  “H’m,” he said. “ ‘Threw her away?’ After suicide, you mean?”

  Burton’s forehead altered slightly; he said nothing.

  “It’s the knife we want, right enough,” Inspector Elliot conceded. “I didn’t like the jagged, crooked look of two of the three wounds on that fellow. They looked more like mauling or tearing. But look here!—look at the notches in this blade. They’ll fit or I’m a Dutchman. What do you say?”

  “About Miss Dane and old Mr. Knowles, sir______?”

  “Yes; ask them if they’ll come in. Thats good work, sergeant; damned good work. You might go and see whether the doctor has any news for me.”

  Dr. Fell and the inspector were beginning to argue as Page picked up an umbrella from the passage and went out to bring Madeline in.

  Not rain or mud could alter Madeline’s trimness, or ruffle her quiet good-temper. She was wearing one of those transparent oilskin waterproofs, with a hood, which made her look as though she were wrapped in cellophane. Her blonde hair was done into something like curls above the ears; she had a pale, healthy face, the nose and mouth a little broad, the eyes a little long; yet the whole of a beauty which grew on you the more you noticed it. For she never gave the impression of wanting to be noticed; she was one of those persons who seem cut out to be good listeners. Her eyes were very dark blue, with a deep glance of sincerity. Though her figure was good—Page always damned himself for noticing her figure—she conveyed an impression of fragility. She put her hand on his arm, and gave him an uncertain smile, as he helped her out of the car under the umbrella.

  “I’m terribly glad it’s at your house,” she said in her soft voice. “It makes things easier, somehow. But I really didn’t know what to do, and it seemed the best way______”

  She glanced back at stout Knowles, who was getting out of the car. Knowles carried his bowler hat even in the rain, and he was picking his wray in a pigeon-toed waddle through the mud.

  Page took Madeline into the study, and introduced her proudly. He wanted to show her off to Dr. Fell. Certainly the doctor’s response was everything that could be wished. He beamed down on her in a way that threatened to split several waistcoat-buttons, and seemed to turn on lights behind his eyeglasses; he towered up, chuckling, and it was the doctor himself who took her waterproof when she sat down.

  Inspector Elliot was at his most brisk and official. He spoke like a shop-assistant behind a counter.

  “Yes, Miss Dane? And what can I do for you?”

  Madeline regarded her clasped hands, and looked round with a pleasant frown before her candid gaze met the inspector’s.

  “You see, it’s very difficult to explain,” she said. “I know I must do it. Someone must do it, after that terrible affair last night. And yet I don’
t want Knowles to get into trouble. He mustn’t, Mr. Elliot______!”

  “If anything’s bothering you, Miss Dane, just tell me,” said Elliot briskly; “and nobody will get into trouble.”

  She gave him a grateful look.

  “Then perhaps— You’d better tell them, Knowles. What you told me.”

  “Heh-heh-heh,” said Dr. Fell. “Sit down, man!”

  “No, sir; thank you; I______”

  “Sit down!” thundered Dr. Fell.

  As an alternative to being pushed down, which from the doctor’s gesture seemed imminent, Knowles obeyed. Knowles was an honest man: sometimes a dangerously honest man. He had one of those faces which in moments of mental stress go transparently pink, as though you could see through the face like a shell. He sat on the edge of the chair, turning his bowler hat round in his hands. Dr. Fell tried to give him a cigar, but he declined this.

  “I wonder, sir, if I may speak frankly?”

  “I should advise it,” said Elliot dryly. “Well?”

  “Of course, sir, I know I should have gone to Lady Farnleigh straightaway. But I couldn’t tell her. I mean quite sincerely that I couldn’t make myself do it. You see, it was through Lady Farnleigh that I came to the Close when Colonel Mardale died. I think I can say honestly that I think more of her than anyone else I know. Honest to God,” added Knowles, with a sudden and unexpected descent into the human, and a slight surge up out of his chair. Then he relapsed. “She was Miss Molly, the doctor’s daughter, from Sutton Chart. I knew______”

  Elliot was patient.

  “Yes, we appreciate that. But this information you were going to give us?”