Death of a Ghost Page 8

  The constable, looking undignified and very young without his helmet, cleared his throat and read the sentences without punctuation or expression.

  ‘I went quietly across the room picked up the scissors struck the blow the boy grunted and went down like a pig the dagger was still in my hand I wiped the handle and dropped it on the body.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Inspector. ‘The word’s “grunted”, Bainbridge, in the second line. “Grunted like a pig”.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the constable and made the correction.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said the Inspector, ‘that’s all right as far as it goes. Now, Mr Fustian, supposing this was the scissors. Would you hold it, please?’

  He picked up a long round ruler from the inkstand and handed it gravely to the man.

  ‘Now you, Mr Campion, would you come and be the deceased, please? The man Dacre was sitting on the edge of the table where the jewellery was exhibited; leaning on it, I take it, supported partly by his hands. Now would you take up that position, please, Mr Campion?’

  Mr Campion came forward obligingly and took up the position the Inspector indicated. It was some moments before the Inspector was satisfied, but at length he stepped back and returned to Max.

  ‘Now, Mr Fustian, would you demonstrate with the ruler, please, exactly how you struck the blow?’

  ‘But this is ridiculous – insufferable.’ Max’s voice was high-pitched with exasperation. ‘I’ve confessed. I stand before you self-accused. What more do you want?’

  ‘Just a matter of routine, sir. We want to do everything right. It saves a lot of trouble in the end. Now, just go over it exactly as you did it in the studio in the dark. You walked over to him. We’ll assume you’ve picked up the scissors.’

  Max was staring at the man, his eyes glittering. He was trembling with excitement and uncontrolled temper, and for a moment it seemed as if he would forget himself entirely and resort to physical violence. However, he pulled himself together and with a superb shrug of his shoulders permitted himself his famous crooked smile.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘if you want to play games, why not? Look very closely and I’ll show you just how the horrid murder was done.’

  He gripped the ruler, raised his arm above his head and brought it down within an inch of Campion’s waistcoat.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Perfectly simple. Straight through the ribs and into the heart. Very pretty blow, really. I think I’m rather pleased with it.’

  The Inspector’s nod was non-committal.

  ‘Just once again, please,’ he said.

  Max complied, all his old contemptuous amusement returning.

  ‘I raised my hand, thus, and brought it down with all my strength.’

  ‘Did you feel any resistance?’ said Oates unexpectedly.

  Max raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, I – I felt the slight resistance of the waistcoat cloth, and I think I touched a bone, but really it happened so quickly. I’m afraid I haven’t your prosaic mind, Inspector.’

  ‘Very likely not, Mr Fustian.’

  There was no underlying tartness in Oates’s tone.

  ‘What did you do then, after you felt the resistance of the bone, I mean?’

  ‘Then I felt the man fall. Then – oh, let me see – then I wiped the handle of the scissors on my handkerchief and dropped them on the body. Then I moved away. Anything else I can tell you?’

  Oates considered. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, I think that’s all, Mr Fustian. Perhaps you will sit down.’

  ‘Really, is all this hanging about necessary?’ Max’s drawl was becoming plaintive. ‘After all, this is a nerve-racking business for me, Inspector, and I should like to get it over.’

  ‘So would we all, Mr Fustian.’ Oates was gently reproving. ‘But then it’s a serious business. Murder’s a capital charge, remember, and, as I say, we don’t want to make any mistakes at the beginning. Hand me that note, will you, Bainbridge? Thank you. Now, you went across the room in the dark and picked up the scissors. The failure of the lights was a complete accident. It came as a surprise to everyone. There’s no question on that point. We have evidence to show that you were standing talking to Miss Harriet Pickering when the lights failed, at approximately a distance of fifteen feet from the table where the deceased was leaning. We have three separate statements to show that. According to your story you went over and picked up the scissors.

  ‘Well, we won’t question that. Wait a minute, sir,’ he continued, waving aside Max’s excited outburst. ‘You then tell us – and we’ve been very careful over this point; you’ve shown us and you’ve described it – that you raised your hand above your head and brought the weapon down, noticing the resistance of the tough cloth of the deceased’s waistcoat and a slight resistance which you thought must be caused by the blades glancing off a bone.

  ‘Now that brings us to another point. The blow which killed Thomas Dacre was an upward trust delivered very scientifically. As the deceased was wearing a woollen pullover and not a waistcoat there was very little resistance offered to the blow by the clothing. The weapon entered the body just below the lower rib and went straight up into the heart, causing almost instantaneous death.’

  Max was sitting very stiff and white in his chair, his bright eyes fixed upon the Inspector’s face. Oates remained slightly preoccupied and perfectly grave.

  ‘Now, to return to your statement, sir. You then removed the weapon, wiped the handle, and dropped it on the body. I query this because the weapon remained in Dacre’s body until the police surgeon took it out. Also the handle was not wiped.

  ‘I think that’s all, except for the matter of the motive. We have a great many murders every year, most of them committed for obvious reasons, some of them very sound reasons. The altruistic murderer is rare, and of course I couldn’t say what the chances of your being one are until we have the evidence of the police doctor as to the state of your mind. But I’m prepared to forgo the trouble of instituting an enquiry of that sort in the present instance. I don’t think it’s necessary in view of the discrepancies I’ve already mentioned.’

  Max regarded him narrowly.

  ‘Do I understand that you are refusing to accept my confession?’ he said icily.

  Oates folded the constable’s notes and fitted them into his pocket-book before he replied. Then he glanced up. His rather tired eyes were as mild as ever.

  ‘Yes, Mr Fustian,’ he said. ‘That’s about it.’

  Max said nothing, and after an interval the Inspector went on speaking. He was very quiet, very friendly, and unexpectedly authoritative.

  ‘Now look here, Mr Fustian,’ he said, ‘you may as well understand our position. We’ve got to get at the truth. No doubt you did what you did for the best reasons in the world. You thought a young lady was about to be arrested and you thought you’d do her a good turn. Very likely you thought we were making a silly mistake and didn’t care what you did to stop us giving unnecessary pain. I appreciate your motives and I think you’ve done a very nice thing, in a way, but you must see that you’re only wasting our time and your own and not really helping things forward at all.

  ‘Oh, I may as well mention too, before you go, that in Miss Harriet Pickering’s evidence she states that she was talking to you throughout the entire time that the lights were out, so you see your gesture was doomed to failure from the beginning. Good evening. I’m sorry this should have happened like this, but you see how it is.’

  There was a moment or two of silence after the Inspector had finished speaking, and then Max rose slowly to his feet and went out of the room without uttering a word. They heard his brisk pattering footsteps disappearing down the corridor.

  The Inspector nodded to the constable, who picked up his helmet and went out.

  Mr Campion and his friend exchanged glances.

  ‘A bad show,’ ventured the younger man.

  The Inspector grunted.

  ‘There’s one born every minute,’ he s
aid. ‘I don’t like that type, though. Exhibitionists, they’re called, aren’t they? It leaves us with our original problem. There isn’t anything to be gained from it at all. I shall give the girl twenty-four hours yet, in case something turns up. Now I think I’d better get back and make my report. A nice thing to happen in the middle of a Sunday afternoon!’

  Mr Campion lit a cigarette.

  ‘It’s an incomprehensible business,’ he said. ‘As you say, the only person in the world who could have had any conceivable reason for killing so insignificant a person as young Dacre was the girl, and I assure you she’s innocent. I’d stake my last bob on it.

  ‘Of course,’ he added hopefully, ‘the whole thing might have been an accident. I mean there’s always the possibility that Dacre was not the man the murderer intended to kill. After all, there’s an element of chance about the whole affair; the blow being struck in the dark and going straight home and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a stunner,’ said the Inspector gloomily. ‘I knew that as soon as I heard the telephone bell going this afternoon.’ He spoke savagely and as one who believed in premonitions. He tapped the papers in his hand.

  ‘From the statements here you’d think we’d come to a lunatic asylum. There’s only two or three concise stories among the lot. That woman Potter was as good as anyone. She seemed to have her wits about her. But her husband was the vaguest thing on earth. D’you know, Campion, I sometimes wonder how some of these fellows manage to keep alive. God knows it’s hard enough to earn a living when you’ve got all your wits about you. But these blokes don’t die. Someone looks after ’em.’

  Campion accompanied the Inspector to the front door, and as they passed through the hall the object of Oates’s gloomy conjectures hurried out of the dining-room to meet them.

  Mr Potter’s red unhappy face wore an even more wretched expression than usual, and his eyes were frightened.

  ‘Oh, I say, you know, I would like to go back to my studio,’ he said. ‘I don’t see any point in hanging about here any longer. It’s all very sad and awkward, I know, but we must live. I mean life’s got to go on, hasn’t it? I can’t do any good here.’

  He was half in and half out of the dining-room doorway as he spoke, and twice he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder back into the room during his short speech. He was so palpably alarmed and preoccupied that both men instinctively glanced past him.

  What they saw was completely unexpected. Lying upon the hearthrug and cutting into the picture made by the angle of the door was a pair of feet encased in sensible brown shoes.

  The Inspector walked into the room, sweeping aside Mr Potter’s tentative and ineffectual gestures of protest.

  ‘That’s all right, Mr Potter,’ he said. ‘I see no reason why you shouldn’t go back to your studio now. It’s only in the garden, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right.’ Mr Potter was still dancing in front of the policeman in an attempt to screen the object on the floor.

  His efforts were completely fruitless, however, and Campion, who had followed Oates, found himself looking down at Mrs Potter lying upon her back, her face crimson and her sleek hair disordered. She was breathing stertorously and her eyes were closed.

  Mr Potter gave up all attempts at deception with a rather pathetic little shrug of his shoulders, and then, as the silence became oppressive, ‘It’s my wife,’ he said apologetically. ‘The shock’s been too much for her, you know. She feels things very deeply. These – these masterful women sometimes do.’

  ‘You’d better get her to bed,’ said the Inspector casually. ‘Can you manage?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes. It’s nothing.’ Mr Potter was already motioning them towards the door. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Oates. ‘Are you coming, Campion?’

  As they walked down the steps to the street the elder man glanced at his friend.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he said. ‘That was a funny thing, wasn’t it? Now I wonder what that means.’

  The younger man’s friendly face wore a faintly puzzled expression.

  ‘I didn’t go very near her,’ he said, ‘but it looked to me as if –’

  ‘Oh, she was drunk all right,’ said Oates. ‘Didn’t you see the decanter on the sideboard? She must have taken pretty well a tumblerful neat to put her out like that. Some people do, you know. It’s a form of drugging. But what for, I’d like to know? What’s she got on her mind that she can’t bear to think about? There’s something very odd about all this, Campion. Well, well, I wonder now.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Little Things

  –

  THE affair at Little Venice might have lingered on at this stage in its development until it became a tabooed subject at Scotland Yard and a worn-out scandal in Bayswater had it not been for the conversation which the grave-faced man from the Foreign Office held with his department.

  The dictates of diplomacy being of considerable importance in those days of conferences, the Home Secretary took action and the Press became oddly uninterested in the murder. A discreet inquest was followed by a quiet funeral, and the remains of Thomas Dacre were deposited in Willesden Cemetery without further attention from the police.

  Lafcadio’s household quietened down and might never again have emerged from its seclusion had it not been for the startling, utterly unexpected tragedy which was the second murder.

  A little over three weeks after Dacre’s death, when Inspector Oates had ceased to sigh with relief for the intervention of the powers that be, Mr Campion was seated in his own room in the flat at Bottle Street when Linda called.

  She came in hurriedly, her coat clinging to her lean young figure. She looked modern and distinctive, and once again he was reminded that the tempestuous Lafcadio was her grandfather. There was the same faint air of rebellion about her, the same nonchalance, the same frank consciousness that she was a privileged person.

  She was not alone. Her companion was a young man of her own age. Campion found himself liking him even before the introductions had been effected.

  He was not unlike the girl herself, loosely but strongly built, wide of shoulder and narrow of hip, with faded hair, a big characterful nose, and shy dancing blue eyes.

  He seemed delighted to see Campion and favoured the room with the frankly approving stare of a friendly child.

  ‘This is Matt D’Urfey,’ said Linda. ‘He used to share a hovel with Tommy.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ve seen your pen drawings about, haven’t I?’ Campion turned to the visitor.

  ‘Very likely,’ said D’Urfey without pride. ‘I must live. I say, I like your flat.’

  He wandered across the room to look at a small Cameron over the bookshelf, leaving Linda to continue the conversation. She did this at once, plunging immediately into the matter on her mind with her usual directness.

  ‘Look here, Albert,’ she said, ‘about Tommy. There’s something very queer going on.’

  Campion glanced up at her shrewdly, his pale eyes suddenly grave behind his spectacles.

  ‘Still?’ he enquired, adding, ‘I mean, anything fresh?’

  ‘Well, I think so.’ Linda’s tone kept a touch of its old defiance. ‘Of course you may pooh-pooh the whole thing, but you can’t get away from the facts. That’s why I’ve brought Matt along. I mean, look at Matt; he’s not the person to imagine anything.’

  The recipient of this somewhat doubtful compliment glanced over his shoulder and smiled delightfully, returning immediately to the etching, which he evidently enjoyed.

  ‘My dear girl’ – Campion’s tone was soothing – ‘I haven’t heard the facts yet. What’s up?’

  ‘There aren’t any actual facts. That’s what’s so infuriating.’

  Her big grey-green eyes above the wide cheek-bones were suddenly suffused with helpless tears.

  Campion sat down. ‘Suppose you tell the sleuth all about it?’ he suggested.

  ‘I want to. That’s why I’ve co
me. Albert, whoever killed Tommy is not content with stealing his life. They’re just obliterating him as well, that’s all.’

  Mr Campion had a gentle, kindly personality and was possessed of infinite patience. Gradually he calmed the girl and got her to tell her rather curious story.

  ‘The first things that disappeared were those drawings of Tommy’s that I showed you on the day of the private view,’ she said. ‘You remember them. They were in that cupboard in the studio. About a dozen or fourteen. Just sketches, most of them, but I’d kept them because they were good. I went to get them out last week because I wanted to have a little show of Tommy’s work somewhere – nothing ambitious, you know, just a few things of his in one of the small galleries. I didn’t want him just to fade away utterly; you see, because he – he – well, he had something, didn’t he?’

  Her voice, never very steady, threatened to break, but she controlled herself and went on steadily:

  ‘First of all I found my drawings had gone. I turned the place out and raised hell generally, but they’d just vanished. They’ve gone as completely as if they’d never existed. And then, of course, I couldn’t get a gallery.’

  She paused and regarded Campion earnestly.

  ‘Can you believe that there isn’t a single small gallery in London to be had for love or money to exhibit Tommy’s work? It isn’t even as though times were good and money was floating around. It’s a conspiracy, Albert, a wretched measly mean effort to stamp Tommy out of the public mind for ever.’

  Mr Campion looked uncomfortable.

  ‘My dear girl,’ he said at last, ‘don’t you think the – well, the unfortunate circumstances of young Dacre’s death may have something to do with it? After all, I know the good gallery folk aren’t all renowned for good taste, but don’t you think they feel they don’t want to lay themselves open to any accusation of sensation-mongering? Why not leave it for a year or so and let him burst on the world without any unpleasant associations?’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders.