Bodies from the Library 2, page 22
part #2 of Bodies from the Library Series
‘H’m,’ said Wyndham dubiously. ‘Well, I don’t suppose it matters very much.’
‘The slashing must have been done when she was still alive,’ the doctor went on. ‘Otherwise she’d hardly have bled so much.’
‘H’m,’ said Wyndham again. He turned to Fen. ‘Look at that, sir. I suppose the killer thought she was dead when he started his butchering.’
The body of Louise Munro lay on its back. She had been a tall, dark-haired, slender girl; and a dispassionate consideration of her face, even in death, might have seen there signs of weakness and indecision. The features were distorted to a hideous mask; the eyes were bulging; the flesh was cyanosed and swollen; and there were traces of bloodstained froth at the nose and mouth.
Wyndham bent and turned the body over. The black evening gown had left her back naked to the waist, and the soft white skin was now scarred with a dozen long, deep cuts, on which the blood was clotted and black. Indeed, there seemed to be blood everywhere on the body and on the floor round it.
‘Yes,’ said Fen, almost to himself, ‘someone disliked that young woman very much … This is one of those occasions when the thought of judicial hanging gives me a positive pleasure. Is there anything else I ought to see?’
‘The gloves,’ Wyndham replied, ‘and the knife. They’re over here.’ He crossed to the mantelpiece and Fen followed him. ‘Both smothered in blood, as you’d expect. They were on the floor by the body. It seems that the knife comes from the kitchen. There are no prints on it. And no name in the gloves, which seem to be quite ordinary.’
Fen nodded. He had cast no more than a cursory glance at the exhibits. ‘She was throttled?’ he enquired.
‘I think so. What’s your opinion, doctor?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said the doctor. ‘The bruising’s distinctive.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Wyndham, ‘if there’s nothing else, I think we might have her taken away. Has the ambulance arrived, doctor?’
‘It’s just come, I think,’ said the doctor, who was peering between the curtains. ‘But there’s a beastly little red sports car in the way of it.’
‘Beastly?’ said Fen indignantly. ‘There’s nothing beastly about Lily Christine. Still, I suppose I’d better go and move her.’
When he returned to the house, Wyndham was talking to a police sergeant in the hall.
‘First of all, find out who has alibis for that game of hide-and-seek and who hasn’t,’ he was saying. ‘And then when you’ve brought me the list you’d better go and search the girl’s bedroom … Oh, and send’—he pulled out a notebook and consulted it—‘Noel Carter and Janice Mond to me in the study.’
As they returned there: ‘Hide-and-seek?’ said Fen interrogatively.
‘It happened during a game,’ Wyndham explained, ‘which of course means a general lack of alibi … The girl wasn’t dead when they found her, you know.’
‘Not dead?’ Fen was startled. ‘Oh, my dear paws. Was she conscious?’
‘Yes, and said a few words. Nothing very revealing, though.’ They had reached the study, and Wyndham lowered his considerable bulk with obvious relief into a chair. ‘I’ll get this fellow Carter to run over it for you.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Just one of the guests—a young man. He has an unassuming air and a good deal of basic conceit. Also he’s rather more fussy and old-maidish than suits his years, but I think he’s all right, and he appears to have a definite alibi.’
‘And the girl—Janice somebody?’
‘She was with him all through the game. They were canoodling in a summer-house.’
‘Good God.’ Fen was shocked. ‘In this weather?’
‘I know. Still, there are the Esquimaux, of course. I often wonder how they manage.’
‘Igloos are very warm, I believe,’ said Fen, interested.
‘Yes.’ Wyndham abandoned this topic with evident reluctance. ‘Anyway, she’s a forward little minx. And got her hooks in him. The more I see of women looking for husbands,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘the more I’m convinced of the total unscrupulousness of the sex.’
There was a knock at the door, and Noel and Janice came in. Fen noted with interest that the girl was considerably more at ease than the man, though both were a little pale. Wyndham motioned them to sit down.
‘I’m sorry we have to trouble you again,’ he said. ‘But Professor Fen is interested in this business, and I think it would be a good thing if he heard your part of it in your own words.’
Noel shrugged. ‘That’s perfectly all right by me. You know, we’ve tried and tried, but neither of us has the least idea who that man was we saw. It can’t have been someone from outside, I suppose?’
Wyndham shook his head grimly. ‘We’ve checked on wheel marks and footprints in the snow, Mr Carter. The only wheel marks are those of Mr Hadow’s car, the only footprints are yours and Miss Mond’s, to and from the summer-house.’
‘So that’s that,’ said Janice, absently twisting a sapphire ring on her finger. ‘Our old friend, the Closed Circle.’ Unexpectedly, she shivered. ‘Thank God Noel and I are out of it. You don’t suspect us of collusion, do you, Inspector?’
‘I don’t suspect anyone of anything at the moment, Miss Mond,’ Wyndham answered evasively. ‘Now, Mr Carter: you and Miss Mond were recalled from the summer-house by a pre-arranged signal—the ringing of the gong. That was at 10.40, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. It was five minutes earlier than we expected. Hadow arrived, and Duncan—that’s MacAdam—brought the game to a premature stop.’
‘And you heard Mr Hadow drive up to the door?’
‘Yes.’
‘This isn’t the detective novelist, is it?’ Fen interrupted.
‘Apparently, sir, yes.’
‘Admirable,’ Fen murmured. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet him. The King of the Groves is almost as frightening a book as The Burning Court, and I can’t say better than that … Sorry. Go on.’
Wyndham said: ‘Then you must have arrived outside the windows of the long gallery at about 10.41?’
‘I suppose so.’ Noel frowned, without apparent reason. ‘And were confronted with the spectacle of the murderer kissing the murderee under the mistletoe …’
‘Noel,’ said Janice with sudden urgency, ‘I’ve only just thought … She must have been … That is, he must have started by then … I remember saying she looked very languid. Oh, God,’ Janice concluded in a small voice.
‘I don’t see,’ Noel protested, ‘why it shouldn’t have happened after we went away … Were we the last to get back to the drawing-room? It would seem to depend on that.’
‘I’ll check on it, sir,’ said the Inspector. ‘It may narrow down the times a little. Or again it may not. That kiss you saw could have been a perfectly innocent affair, with the girl alive and well. There’s no reason, on the evidence, why the murder shouldn’t have been committed afterwards.’
‘But who by? We were all in the draw—Oh, hell. No, we weren’t, though.’
Wyndham looked at him sharply, and tapped his pencil on the arm of his chair. ‘Can you remember who was not in the drawing-room, Mr Carter—between the end of the hide-and-seek game and the discovery of the body?’
‘Yes. I think I can, that is. Patricia—that’s Patricia Davenant—had broken a shoulder strap, and went up to her room to change. Then four of the older people got up a bridge game in the library—old Murchison and his wife, and Mr and Mrs Joyce. I imagine, though, that they must have been together all the time. And Duncan went to show Peter Hadow his room. But damn it all, it would have been abnormally risky at that time. And what would Louise have been doing, alone in the long gallery?’
‘Waiting for someone, perhaps,’ Janice suggested. ‘And I suppose the assumption is that if the kiss we saw was a genuine innocuous affair, the man concerned is afraid to come forward after what’s happened.’
Wyndham nodded. ‘That’s it, more or less. But I agree that the other notion’s more plausible—namely, that the murderer heard you coming in the middle of his—activities, and snatched the girl up and kissed her—kissed her: my God, what a nerve—to put you off the scent. There’s only one door to the long gallery, isn’t there?—the one that leads through the vestibule into the hall? Well, then, if he’d just left her, and made for that, he would have been approaching the light and there would have been every chance of your recognising him …’
‘Hey!’ Fen howled. There was an astonished silence. ‘You seem to forget,’ he went on waspishly, ‘that I know nothing whatever about all this. You daze me, with your alternative hypotheses. Let me get the set-up clear. When you looked into the long gallery, the lights were on?’
‘A light was on,’ said Noel. ‘A small standard lamp at the end by the door. The other end, of course, where the couple was standing, was almost dark.’
‘And all the curtains were open?’
‘Yes.’
Fen muttered something unintelligible, and lit a cigarette. Then he went on: ‘Doesn’t it strike you as extraordinary that a murderer should go about his business in a lighted room—even a dimly-lighted room—with the curtains wide; and the rest of the party pottering about anywhere and everywhere in and out of the house?’
‘I don’t think he can have expected anyone to be outside,’ said Noel.
‘And then, you see, the lights were all turned off for the game,’ said Janice.
‘At the main,’ said Noel.
‘And then when they were all turned on again—’
‘Five minutes earlier than anyone expected.’
‘—it must have taken him completely by surprise.’
‘And he can’t have missed hearing us coming.’
‘The lights went on just as we rounded the corner of the house.’
‘So you see—’
‘Yes, just a minute, please,’ said Fen, eyeing them somewhat askance. ‘I think I’ve managed to grasp all that. Can’t you say anything definite about the man?’
Noel sneezed, and gazed reproachfully at Janice, who refused to look at him. Through the folds of his handkerchief he mumbled:
‘Well, he was wearing a dinner jacket; but so was every other male in the party.’
‘His waistline certainly wasn’t more than average,’ Janice added, ‘which cuts out one or two people. I don’t know about the height. Average, I should say.’
‘Yes,’ said Noel. ‘And his head was in shadow, so he might have been dark or fair.’
Fen asked: ‘Could it have been a woman dressed as a man?’
They stared at him. ‘I suppose so,’ said Janice. ‘But then there would have been no time to change back again. All the women in the party were present and correct when we got back to the drawing-room—as far as I know, anyway.’
Fen turned to Wyndham. ‘What about the servants?’
‘They’re out of it,’ said Wyndham definitely. ‘They went off duty at ten o’clock, and held a Christmas Eve celebration in their own sitting-room. They were all together during the whole of the relevant time. Thank God one can narrow down the field that far.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen gnomically. He resumed his questions. ‘When you left the window of the long gallery, you presumably didn’t go straight back into the drawing-room? If you had, you would have arrived before, or simultaneously with, the person who was with Mrs Munro.’
‘No, we didn’t go straight back,’ said Noel.
‘Noel insisted on kissing me outside the front door,’ Janice explained with maidenly prevarication.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Noel, and sneezed again.
‘Very proper,’ Fen commented, beaming at them like some sentimental old aunt. ‘And you saw no one in the hall when at last you did get inside?’
‘No one.’
‘What makes you so sure that the girl you saw in the long gallery was Louise Munro?
‘Now I come to think of it, said Noel blankly, ‘I’m not at all sure. In fact, it was Janice who said—’
‘She was wearing Louise’s jade bracelet, anyway,’ Janice interrupted. ‘It caught the light. So obviously, I assumed it was Louise.’
The clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past midnight, in tiny, fluid chimes.
‘All right,’ said Fen with a sigh. ‘Now, about finding the unfortunate girl. What time would that be?’
‘About five past eleven, I believe,’ Noel replied. He lit a cigarette and sucked at it dispiritedly. ‘Five of us went across to the long gallery. We were in that deplorably jocose condition which always seems to be induced by playing children’s games.’
‘Who were the five?’
‘Janice, myself, Duncan, Richard Neame and Simon Moore.’
‘Who are Richard Neame and Simon Moore?’
‘Richard’s a master at some derelict boys’ school or other. Very stodgy and earnest about Education. Also, he’s quite insanely in love with that little b-i-t-c-h Patricia Davenant, and engaged to marry her. Simon Moore’s middle-aged, very hail-fellow-well-met, and a professional week-ender. He wanted to marry Louise, but only for her money, I fancy.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Fen reminiscently. ‘I always intended to marry some rich woman or other. But I never came across one,’ he concluded with pathos. ‘Well, well … Anyway, you were all together when you found Louise Munro.’
‘Yes.’ Noel absently stubbed out his cigarette, which he had hardly started to smoke, and lit another one. ‘Janice let out a shriek like a startled gull—’
‘Oh, don’t be an idiot, Noel,’ said Janice with exaggerated weariness.
‘—and Duncan lifted Louise’s head; she was lying on her back. He said: ‘She’s still alive’, and then she opened her eyes and looked at us, and Duncan asked her who—who was responsible. I don’t think I shall ever forget the sounds she made when she tried to speak, and what she finally said.’ Noel paused, soberly.
‘Well?’
‘She said: “Patricia … in danger … help her.” And then she stopped, and Richard looked round like a startled rabbit, and scuttled off with Simon Moore to Patricia’s bedroom. MacAdam said: “Tell us who did this,” and Louise muttered—poor girl, she must have been in horrible pain: “Mustn’t be destroyed … I’ll tell you … who …”
‘And then she died.’
Noel put out the second cigarette. For a moment there was a silence. Fen broke it by asking:
‘And what about this other girl—Patricia?’
‘She was all right, but—’ Noel turned to Wyndham. ‘You know more about this part than I do.’
Wyndham stirred uneasily in his chair. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It seems that Miss Davenant is in the habit of taking a tonic every night.’ He paused, and added heavily: ‘We found a large quantity of strychnine in it.’
5
Sergeant Stokes came in, and deposited a sheet of paper in front of the inspector. He was a ruddy, amiable young man.
‘It’s easier than we thought,’ he announced. ‘Only three men and one woman unaccounted for during the whole of the game. It would appear’—the Sergeant grinned unprofessionally—‘that people hid, for the most part, in couples. Mr MacAdam and an old gentleman named Mr Murchison have partial alibis. They met about five minutes after the game started, and drank whisky by candle-light until Mr Hadow arrived. No one admits to having gone into the long gallery: they say it was too near and obvious a hiding-place.’
Wyndham uttered a faint grunt. ‘The body’s been taken away?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case you can transfer Scott from the door of the long gallery to me here. I shall want to interview some of these people. You’d better go now and search Mrs Munro’s room.’
The Sergeant vaguely parodied a salute, and departed. Wyndham read aloud from the paper on his knees.
‘Patricia Davenant. Richard Neame. Simon Moore. Edgar Nathan. It seems they’ve none of them got alibis. Who’s Edgar Nathan?’
‘A ghastly man,’ Noel explained obliquely. ‘High church. Arty. Blue in the jowl.’
‘And wearing a dinner jacket?’ Fen put in.
‘No. Clerical black … Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, from behind, and in a dim light, it would look like a dinner jacket.’
The constable who had been guarding the door of the long gallery came in.
‘Sit down, Scott,’ said Wyndham. ‘I’ll have something for you to do in a moment … Mr Carter, I suppose there’s no doubt that Mrs Munro was all right immediately before the game of hide-and-seek?’
‘No doubt whatever. I saw her myself.’
‘Then there are two possibilities: either she was killed during the game, or she was killed in the interval between the end of the game and the time when she was found. Now: those without alibis for one or both of those periods are Patricia Davenant, Richard Neame, Simon Moore, Edgar Nathan, Duncan MacAdam and Peter Hadow. I include the last two on the assumption that MacAdam didn’t stay with Hadow once he’d shown him up to his room. The bridge party I should think we could rule out. Is it impossible that either Neame, Moore or Nathan could have been the man you saw in the long gallery with Mrs Munro?’
‘No,’ said Noel immediately. ‘It might have been any of them.’
‘Was Mrs Munro the sort of person to allow virtually anyone to kiss her? I ask on the assumption that she was killed after the episode you witnessed.’
Janice had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘Yes, she was,’ she said. ‘Louise was quite promiscuous. I’m sorry if that sounds catty, but it happens to be true.’
Wyndham sighed. ‘Thank you very much. Is there anything else you want to ask, Professor Fen?’
Fen, who had been fidgeting with a music box and had succeeded in inducing it to perform The Bluebells of Scotland, said:
‘Yes, I’ve got two questions. First, are you sure Louise Munro wasn’t raving when she said those few words after you found her?’
Noel hesitated, thinking back. ‘No, I’m certain she wasn’t,’ he answered at last. ‘I think she had something clear and definite and sane to say to us. Anyway, she was right about Patricia.’
