So Many Doors, page 23
“Aren’t we rather losing time? Didn’t you say you thought you knew now where Miss Winlock was? Hadn’t we better get after her? No time to waste.”
“No, indeed,” Bobby agreed. “No. But all the same . . . all the same,” he repeated vaguely.
“Any idea Harper might be hiding here? Is that it?” the superintendent asked. “I don’t see where.”
“I don’t know that ‘hiding’ is the word I was thinking of,” Bobby answered. “Miss Martin, without knowing it, dropped a hint when I was talking to her that made me think I could guess where Miss Winlock might be. But if it was our lost Bella those boys saw, then she may have departed elsewhere by now.”
“In my view,” declared the superintendent, “just as likely or more that it was Vea Burden they saw. She has a way of popping up.”
“She has,” agreed Bobby wholeheartedly. “What I’m afraid of is that she may pop out for a change. But the story young David Pope told us did suggest it was the Winlock girl knew about this place, not Vea. And not likely they both knew. Though, of course, that’s possible. But not likely. What I think is that Bella came along to see how things had worked out.”
“Wouldn’t take her long,” grunted the superintendent, who was growing impatient.
“Something did apparently,” Bobby pointed out.
“Could she have met Vea Burden here?” the superintendent suggested.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Bobby admitted, uneasily—so uneasily, indeed, that the superintendent grew uneasy, too.
“Only one went away,” he said.
While the others watched, Bobby went again in turn into each of those dark corners of the garage, where already he had assured himself that nothing lay unperceived. But now he used his electric torch, bending down and examining carefully the flooring in each corner in turn. From that farther from the door, where the shadows lay the deepest, he called:
“There is a trap-door here. A cellar.”
The superintendent and his men came over and joined him. They lifted the trap-door, and Bobby shone the light of his torch down the steep, wooden, ladder-like steps now disclosed.
“There’s something there,” the superintendent said. “It’s a dead body. Have we found Bella Winlock at last? Was Vea Burden or some one waiting for her here?”
Two of his men were already clambering down the wooden steps, or ladder, rather. One of them called:
“It’s a man. He’s tied up. He’s still alive. Not much more, though.”
“A man?” the superintendent repeated. “If it’s Jerry George, bit of a pity we did find him.”
“More likely Harper,” Bobby said. “The pieces are beginning to fit.”
“Are they?” said the superintendent. “Blessed if I see it. The whole lot of ’em at cross purposes.”
“Our Bella pulling the strings,” Bobby said. “Bella, not Bunty this time.”
“Who is Bunty?” asked the superintendent, no student of the drama.
Bobby went to help the two men who were bringing that inert, corpse-like, parcelled figure to the surface. The superintendent sent one of his other men to summon an ambulance. Bobby recognized Harper. He had been swathed in rope till he looked like a mummy. His mouth had been secured by surgical plaster. The ropes securing him were cut loose. His cramped and swollen limbs were massaged to restore circulation. Water was brought from a neighbouring house where-with to remove the surgical plaster. It was probably the pain caused by the renewed flow of blood through veins and arteries that did as much to restore consciousness as did the brandy given him at the first sign of returning life. He seemed to recognize Bobby, and muttered something inaudible.
Bobby knelt by his side.
“Can you tell us what happened?” he asked.
“Bella, it was Bella,” Harper muttered. “It’s hurting—hurting like hell,” he complained.
“We’re trying to get the circulation going again,” Bobby explained. “What about Bella?”
Harper began to tell his story, interspersing it with many groans, and once with a sudden relapse into unconsciousness.
“Bella asked me to meet her here,” he said, or rather gasped in detached and repetitive sentences. “She said she had made up her mind to tell the whole story. Only she wanted to see me first. She said she couldn’t stand it any longer, not now she knew Bobby Owen was after her.” Harper managed to produce something remotely resembling a smile. “She said you always got there in the end because you were too thick-headed to give up when you knew it was no good going on.”
“Well, of all the cheek,” commented Bobby, annoyed.
“She said most likely you would this time, too,” Harper went on, “and she thought you must have guessed some of it already, so she might as well own up. Only what did I think? Because I knew.”
“Knew what?” interposed the superintendent.
“I saw her,” Harper said. “She didn’t mean. She went wild when she knew. She grabbed a knife and jabbed it at him, and it was sharp, and it went in at the neck. All over in a minute. She said to meet her here. She never let on it was where Monk had stored that lorry-load of stuff because of Jerry George trying to do him down over his share. I didn’t altogether trust her. I brought Grace along. We had sort of made it up, see? I didn’t feel the same about Bella after what I saw, and Grace had come on her own because she knew things were all balled up, and she wanted to do something. So I asked her to come along, but to wait for me at the railway station.”
“Good thing you did,” Bobby remarked. “Or we might not have found you till too late. And that wouldn’t have been so long. Go on.”
“Soon as I got here I copped it,” Harper said. “From behind. K.O. When I came to myself I was lying all tied up, and Jerry was fixing up a lorry ready for his getaway. I yelled to him to let me loose. He came over and kicked me in the ribs. He said that would teach me to come trying to sneak off with his stuff. He said I was a dirty thief, and I could lie there and rot. When I tried to speak he kicked me again, and then he shoved some rags in my mouth, so I couldn’t talk, and went on with the lorry. When he was ready he came back and put a blunt sort of dinner-knife in my hands where he had them tied to my side, and said I could get myself free with that if I worked hard. He gave me a few more kicks and went off. He said I ought to be grateful to him for not doing me in. Then Bella came. God, I was glad to see her. God, I never dreamed, never.”
“What happened?”
“She never spoke a word,” Harper said; and as he lay he began to tremble. As he lay he trembled till he could no longer speak, and on his pale and pain-contorted features there showed a thin veil of sweat.
“Take it easy,” said the superintendent; “take it easy, boy.”
Harper tried again to speak, but could not. He began to cry. They waited a little, and Bobby gave him a drop more brandy.
“God in heaven!” Harper said. “I couldn’t believe it. I thought she must be mad. I thought it might be all a dream. After I had helped her. After what I had done. She never spoke. Not one word. Not all the time. At first I thought she was trying to undo the knots. I managed to spit out the rags Jerry had pushed in my mouth. I said to her to mind. I said she was only tightening the knots. I said to take the knife Jerry had left and cut the rope. I said she was only making it tighter. She never spoke. She just went on tying and tying, and never said a word. I told her not to. I asked her what she was doing. I couldn’t make it out. She got some more cord—long, thin cord—and she tied it round and round me, and sometimes she pushed me over and then back again, and all the time she went on tying and never spoke a word. I kept asking her what she was doing. I said for God’s sake to stop fooling. I said if it was a joke she had me scared all right. I said didn’t she remember how I had helped her? I said wasn’t it me planted his suitcase at the hotel for her, so as the cops would think he was still alive and let up. I promised to do anything she liked if only she would cut me loose instead of tying me up tighter than before. She never took notice. She mightn’t have heard. She never said a word. I thought that I was going mad, or else that she was. I began to scream then. There wasn’t any one to hear, and she had some surgical plaster she fastened over my mouth. Then she began to drag me along the floor. A long way. I didn’t understand that either. I’m heavy, and sometimes she had to stop. She got me to the edge of a hole, and she pushed me over. Next thing I remember I was lying there in the dark and I couldn’t move or anything. She had made a good job of it all right. Then it was you. What day is it? I must have been there days.”
“About two hours,” Bobby said, “and long enough. You’re all right now, though, and here’s the ambulance. They’ll soon have you on your legs again in hospital.”
“I’ll never be the same again,” Harper muttered. “Tell Grace, will you?”
CHAPTER XXX
“DRIVEN BY THE FURIES”
The ambulance departed. More help arrived. The superintendent began to waken from the sort of dazed trance into which these developments had plunged him. Not that that had prevented him from going very efficiently through the motions required to ensure that all necessary action was taken. But now that the unlucky Harper had been dispatched to hospital, and the ordinary routine was in full swing—sketching, photographing, measuring, all the rest of it—the superintendent found himself able to give his bewilderment and surprise full expression. He caught hold of Bobby’s arm as Bobby was trying to explain to the police photographers exactly what pictures he wanted taken and from what angle.
“Mr Owen,” said the superintendent. He paused to gather his thoughts. He drew a deep breath. “Mr Owen,” he said. “Well, now. Now then,” and he looked anxiously for a response.
“Yes, indeed,” Bobby answered sympathetically, knowing well how the superintendent felt, since in other cases he had felt much the same when elaborately constructed theories based on what had seemed firm premises collapsed beneath the destroying finger of fact.
“A young girl,” said the superintendent. “A young girl like her. Pretty, too. A good looker. And then—this. Can you trust Harper’s story?”
“Well, there’s a certain amount of circumstantial evidence,” suggested Bobby mildly. “Harper certainly didn’t tie himself up like that or roll himself down those rather steep cellar steps.”
“I wasn’t meaning that,” the superintendent said. “Couldn’t it have been some one else? The Vea Burden woman or some one? Only he didn’t want to say?”
“I don’t think Harper could have been lying,” Bobby answered. “I don’t see why he should, and I don’t think he was in any condition to invent fairy tales. The truth very literally squeezed out of him, I should say.”
“Well, then,” said the superintendent, facing it bravely, “that means Bella Winlock killed Monk. And hid his body.”
“It does,” agreed Bobby. “Always clear that some one killed some one that night at Bexley House. No direct evidence who was killed till we found Monk’s dead body at the Round Table Mine. No direct evidence who did the killing till we got Harper’s statement.”
“But why—why should she? Why at the very start of their going off together? Afterwards, yes. If she found out he was going to dish her, as chaps like him mostly do. But at the very first. It doesn’t—gell,” said the superintendent with emphasis.
“At a guess,” Bobby said, “Vea Burden told her that night that she herself was married to Mark. There’s evidence Bella had a pretty fierce temper under that ‘poor-little-me’ pose of hers; and when a fierce temper generally kept under does break out, it is all the more uncontrollable and unpredictable. She had played fast and loose with so many men herself probably it was a bad shock to her to find one of them had been treating her the same way. Most likely he tried to get back the money—the five hundred pounds—he had allowed her to win gambling at Bexley House. And laughed at her for a little fool. I expect, too, what made it worse for her was that she was, for the time, genuinely in love with Monk. One of those men for whom women seem to fall instinctively—God knows why. Or perhaps He doesn’t, either. Remember the whole set-up suggested a sudden violent flare-up of passion out of control. Just as the absence of dabs on the knife suggested gloves, and gloves suggested a woman. But no proof.”
“That’s all very well,” grumbled the superintendent. “But why Harper? He said he helped her. We can hold him for that,” he added, with a passing glint of satisfaction. “Accessory.”
“Oh, yes, he was that all right,” Bobby agreed. “And it was precisely because of that—because he knew the truth—that he had to be got rid of. A witness who might tell. Not only that. We had to be provided with a fresh wild goose to hunt—poor Harper! he was a bit of a goose, too. She tried it before. Drove her car over the cliffs into the sea, taking care to leave things lying about so as to make sure of attracting attention. She got rid of Monk’s body at the Round Table Mine after that night-mare drive of hers. Probably her first plan had been to leave the body in the car when she crashed it and hope it would never be recovered. But there was a good chance it would be. Often the sea gives up its dead. The last thing she wanted. So she changed her plan. Her best hope was to keep us guessing, wondering what had really happened—and to whom. Keep us guessing. That was her trump card. Probably she even hoped we might decide there wasn’t enough evidence to justify us in continuing the investigation.”
“What I thought often enough,” admitted the superintendent. “What I got a hint some of them in London thought. If it hadn’t been for you sticking to it the way you did, it might have been that way.”
“Even if the car were recovered,” Bobby went on, “she hoped we might still keep on looking for a body that might have been washed out to sea. So long as we were busy doing that—wild-goose chasing—no doubt she felt fairly safe. Mean-while she went into hiding. Couldn’t afford to be found and questioned; and hoped she wouldn’t be looked for, if she could get it believed that she was the victim and her body in the sea.”
“If you’re right,” grumbled the superintendent, “she had it all nicely thought out.”
“A young lady of infinite resource,” Bobby agreed. “Admirable in improvisation. Most—man or woman—would have wanted to get as far away as possible. She was different. She joined up with two girl hikers. That explained her. Gave her a background—and an alibi. She chose them because she had heard of their complaint that her car in that wild midnight race had nearly knocked them down. Well, then, if she could get herself identified with them, then clearly she wasn’t the driver. Though I don’t expect she had all that carefully thought out. I think she acted on instinct, just as she did when she snatched up a knife from the supper-table and jabbed it at Monk, and it happened to go in and cut what the doctor called the interior jugular, I think. Quite promising so far, with Monk’s body safely hidden; with us, she hoped, busy chasing the wild goose she had provided; and with her getting accepted as a nearly run over victim of the very car she was herself driving. But it all went wrong when Monk’s body was found and when the two girl hikers had to go back to work. Though her last exploit was to persuade them to give wrong names and addresses.”
“I suppose that’s why you were so keen on tracing them,” the superintendent remarked. “But I still don’t see what put you on to them at first.”
“I happened to remember,” Bobby explained, much as he hated explaining because he knew the moment an explanation was given, every one immediately saw how simple it had all been and nothing deserving any credit. Much better to leave your methods wrapped in mystery—if you were allowed to: “I happened to remember that originally two girls had been spoken of, and then it seemed there were three. I began to wonder where the third had come from, and if—of course, it was very much a shot in the dark at the time—if this third girl who seemed to have turned up all of a sudden was also the one who had vanished. Also all of a sudden. Then I noticed that all three girls had the same first name—Mary. Nothing much in that—Mary’s a common enough name. But a bit of a coincidence for all three to be Mary. And it might have been a way of starting a chat and paling up. ‘How funny, we are all three Marys, isn’t it odd?’ That sort of thing. To break the ice. I thought it was worth following up. And there was an old ballad came into my head.
‘There was Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton, And Mary Carmichael and me.’”
“Yes, but what had that to do with it?” asked the superintendent.
“Oh, nothing,” Bobby admitted. “Except that the ‘me’ in that old ballad was a murderess, and I wondered if perhaps this new third Mary wasn’t also a ‘me’ and a murderess.”
“Good guessing,” approved the superintendent.
“I call it deduction,” protested Bobby, in a slightly injured voice. “Anyhow, all her hopes and plans collapsed when Monk’s body was found. She had hoped it would remain hidden for years while we worked on in a blind alley—on the assumption that she was the victim and Monk the murderer we had to find. Or, alternatively, in another blind alley—that nothing very serious had really happened, that she and Monk were enjoying themselves somewhere abroad, and nothing for us to worry about. As soon as she heard Monk’s body had been found she must have realized she had to think up something fresh. That’s where Harper came in. He had to disappear, both because he knew the truth and because we had to be provided with a new wild goose to chase. That was the aim of the yarn she told David Pope and hoped we would accept. Then we could get busy searching for him who all the time was dead in the cellar in this old building where no one ever came.”
The superintendent was mopping his brow, and he had become a little pale.
“A devil incarnate,” he said. “That’s her.”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby. He added thoughtfully, speaking more to himself than to his companion: “Yes—or else driven by the Furies, by her own fears, her own terror of what she herself had done in one moment of uncontrolled passion so that in very truth she knew not what she did.”
