The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries Part 14

They started walking slowly through the ballroom, which was now cleared. Tables were folded and leaning against the far wall; chairs were stacked in towering piles in front of the stage; and an army of young men and woman were busy with vacuum cleaners, criss-crossing the floor, their attention fixed on the carpet.

"My handbag," Hilda shouted above the drone of the cleaners. "I think I must have left it last night." Poke nodded and looked around absently. "In all the excitement," Hilda added, suddenly wondering if "excitement" were the correct word to use under the circ.u.mstances.

"Ah!" Sidney Poke motioned Hilda towards a small occasional table set up by the door leading out to the toilets. The table contained a few jackets plus an a.s.sortment of bags.

"All those were left last night?" Hilda said in astonishment.

Poke gave an approximation of a laugh sounding more like a snort. "No, these belong to the cleaners," he said, "but your bag if you did leave it, and if it has been found-is most likely here as anywhere."

As they reached the table, Hilda saw her bag. Her heart rose-or surfaced . . . or whatever it was that hearts did that was the opposite to sinking and she reached out for it, careful not to appear too anxious. "That's it," she said triumphantly.

She picked up the bag and unfastened the sneck. She removed her purse, noting with grim satisfaction that the small bottle was still there, nestled in the bottom amongst Kleenex tissues, lipstick, comb and all the other rudiments of a woman's handbag, and flipped it open. "There," she announced, proudly displaying her library card, "just to show it's mine."

Hilda replaced the card and dropped the purse back into the depths of the handbag. Fastening the sneck, she said, "Well, I'll get off then."

Sidney Poke nodded. He took her arm and gently led her towards the main door that went on to the toilets and out to the reception area.

"How are you today? I mean, how are you feeling?"

Hilda made a face. "Oh," she said, "you mean after-"

Poke nodded with the quietly attentive air of an undertaker.

"It was my sister. It was Harriet who collapsed. Not me."

"Ah." He pushed open the door and ushered her through ahead of him. "Well, I'll leave you here, if that's okay, Miss Merkinson." Poke stopped at a desk in a small recess and shuffled in his pocket. He produced a set of keys and set about opening the desk's deep drawer. "We're running a little behind, what with-you know."

Hilda nodded, watching Poke reach around into the drawer.

Somewhere far off, but coming closer, she could hear footsteps.

"Ah, here it is," Poke grunted. "Must have pushed it further back than I thought." His back to Hilda, Poke pulled out a small bundle and closed the drawer.

The footsteps were getting closer. Hilda tried to ignore the yawning staircase on her right, the fabled 45 steps that led down to the Gentlemen's toilets. Deep in her mind, the footsteps belonged to Arthur Clark as he descended less than 12 hours earlier to empty his bowel and meet his end . . . except they seemed to be coming towards her rather than away from her. She shook her head and turned back to see the Hotel manager holding a toilet roll enclosed in a polythene bag.

"Right then," Poke was saying, though his words sounded like rushing water in Hilda's ears. Rushing water and footsteps, now getting very close-echoing-as though there were more than just Arthur coming back.

Poke moved the bag from one hand to the other as he returned the keys to his pocket. Hilda frowned at the bag, looked at Poke, smiled awkwardly, and turned around to face the toilet steps, half expecting to see Arthur climbing up to see her, to ask her why she had done what she had done, and bringing other people with him, friends of his, friends who-wanted toilet paper . . .

wanted to talk to her and smooth her troubled brow with grave-cold hands. She turned sharply, took a couple of steps in the direction of the reception area and then stopped. There were figures approaching, figures making footstep-sounds. Her initial relief at discovering that the footsteps didn't belong to her sister's fancy man quickly evaporated when Malcolm Broadhurst called out to her.

"Ah, one of the Misses Merkinson." Broadhurst's tone was cheery. There were two policemen with him. "Now which one are you?"

Hilda started to speak and then, clutching her bag tightly, she spun around. Behind her, Sidney Poke was still standing by the doors leading into the ballroom, the toilet roll in his hand.

"Miss Merkinson?"

Hilda looked all around, clutching the bag even tighter, willing it to disappear . . . willing it to be a week earlier, willing there to have been no rain so that Jack Wilson's General Store had not been flooded and Harriet had not had to stay and so Hilda had not gone for the fish and chips and so met Arthur who believed that she was her own sister . . . willing herself, back seven years ago, not to take the job at the animal testing centre . . . so many things. So many opportunities for her to have avoided this single instant.

But it was too late.

The footsteps were growing louder and slightly faster, moving towards her along the polished floor.

"Miss Merkinson?"

Then it all became clear.

She could escape through the toilets somehow. Escape and find Harriet and they could run off together, start a new routine . . . just the two of them.

She turned and almost leapt forward.

The piece of slanted ceiling that descended with the steps stayed straight for a second or two and then tilted.

Just as she was wondering why that was, Hilda hit her head on the side railing. She felt something warm on her cheek, spun around, and smashed her shin on one of the steps. For a second, amidst the confusion and the pain, she thought she could see a figure standing at the foot of the 45 steps, a figure patiently waiting for her to come down. She heard a crack.

Hilda slipped backwards and to the side somehow, hitting the back of her head on another step before turning over fully and ramming her face into one of the rail supports. More warmth . . .

And then blackness.

Another step broke her nose and her pelvis, another her third and fourth ribs-sending a splinter of bone into her left lung and sc.r.a.ping a sliver of tissue away from the second and third ventricles of her heart.

Two more steps fractured her skull, broke her left collarbone and smashed the base of her spine. The final step on the first flight sent another piece of rib through her heart.

She rolled onto the first landing and then proceeded down the second flight. And then onto the third.

It was Betty Thorndike who found Harriet.

She had called around on her way back from Edna Clark's house, just to see if Harriet was all right. Of course, she wasn't.

By Monday afternoon, it was all over bar the shouting. And as far as Malcolm Broadhurst was concerned, there would be little of that. He had been to see Edna Clark on the Sunday afternoon, with both of the Merkinson sisters lying on metal trays in the cold and strangely-smelling bas.e.m.e.nt of Halifax General.

In the silent loneliness of Edna's kitchen, the widow had told him everything that Harriet had told her. Broadhurst put the rest of it together himself.

He had spoken with his boss at Halifax CID and they had agreed between the two of them that there was little to be achieved by releasing all of the gory details. They decided that Hilda had been a keen promoter of animal rights, using her position at the centre to obtain vital information of the testing Ian Arb.u.t.t was carrying out-hence the break-in.

Harriet, meanwhile, had been unable to come to terms with her sister's death and had hanged herself. Only a slight discrepancy in timing suggested that such might not be the case and n.o.body would hear about that discrepancy. Now the two of them were united again . . . in whatever routine they could arrange.

Edna Clark cried when the policeman explained what he had organized. It meant that her life had been partially restored. To all intents and purposes, she was still the grieving widow of a fine and upstanding member of the Luddersedge community. Betty Thorndike, who had not said anything to anyone about Harriet Merkinson's revelations and had had no intention of doing so-consoled Edna and a.s.sured her that everything was all right.

"He was a good man," Edna whispered into her friend's shoulder. "Deep down," she added.

"I know he was, love," Betty agreed. "They all are-deep down."

Driving back to Halifax late afternoon on Monday, there was just one thing that niggled Malcolm Broadhurst. He could not understand why Ian Arb.u.t.t had seemed somehow relieved-albeit momentarily-when he was told of Hilda's unfortunate accident.

But the policeman did not believe Arb.u.t.t was in any way involved in either the break-in or Arthur Clark's murder. There was another story there, somewhere, as, of course, there always is.

Contrary to the Evidence Douglas Newton Douglas Newton (18851951) was a prolific writer of books, articles and stories for well over forty years. He achieved a certain fame when his novel War (1914), which pretty much predicted and depicted the First World War, appeared a few months before the real War broke out. He did it all again with The North Afire (1914), which looked at the future conflict in Northern Ireland. A journalist by profession, Newton was selected to accompany the future Edward VIII on his tour of Canada just after the War and wrote about it in Westward with the Prince of Wales (1920). Newton was immensely prolific, so much so that despite having some fifty books published, that represents scarcely a tenth of his total output for magazines during the 1920s and 1930s. One such series that never made it into book-form featured Paul Toft, an investigator who served as an unofficial consultant for the police, but who acted on intuition and instinct rather than hard facts and deduction. The series ran in Pearson's Magazine during the mid-1930s and includes the following ingenious and near perfect crime.

We sat in the room where old Stanley Park had died so suddenly that morning. As the witnesses unfolded the story, even Paul Toft seemed to grow a mere huddle of sharp knees and elbows in his arm-chair, while Inspector Grimes became a bouncing ma.s.s of irritation as he realised that he had been dragged out to Friars' Vale on the mere reasonless suspicions of a headstrong young woman. The local police sergeant and I sympathised with him.

This was no crime, but a sheer waste of time.

Gerald Park was perfectly frank about the part he had played in the tragedy of his uncle's death.

He had come out from Stripe to old Stanley Park to borrow money. He hadn't had much hope of getting it, he admitted, because there was bad blood between him and his uncle who had kicked him out of this very house for stealing, less than a month ago. He was so desperately hard up, however, he had had to make the try.

He had come out by train to Friars' Vale Halt and had taken a taxi from there. He had timed himself to arrive about 10.30, because that was the time his uncle always read his papers in this sitting-room. He let himself in with the door-key he had kept when his uncle had turned him out. He did that because he knew that if he rang, Mrs Ferris, his uncle's housekeeper and only servant, would not let him in. It would have been more than her place was worth, seeing how his uncle had come to hate him.

Anyhow, his idea was to slip in quietly, getting into his uncle's presence before anything could intervene. But "springing" himself on the old man like that had proved to be a horrible mistake. His uncle saw him even before he could get into the room, and rose from his arm-chair by the fire with such a snarl of rage that Gerald stopped dead in the very doorway.

The old man made furious gestures at him to get out. Gerald spoke, attempting to placate him, but that only made matters worse. At the sound of his nephew's voice, old Stanley Park took a step forward as though he meant to throw the weedy young man out with his own hands and then, quite suddenly, he crumpled up and fell to the floor.

Gerald, terrified, sure that the old man had had a stroke at the sight of him, called over his shoulder to Gra.s.s, the taxi-man for the thing had happened so swiftly that he had never even moved inside the sitting-room door. Gra.s.s ran in and together they went to the old man. Or, rather, Gerald left that to Gra.s.s, who was more competent, while he himself ran back into the hall and called out to Mrs Ferris in the kitchen, before hurrying across the hall into the dining-room to get brandy from the cellarette.

Mrs Ferris was coming up the hall as he came out with the brandy, and they went into the sitting-room together. By then Gra.s.s was sure that there was very little hope for old Stanley, though on Gerald's instructions he drove at once for a doctor, there being no telephone in the house. Mrs Ferris had, meanwhile, taken charge of the old man, Gerald standing by doing anything she ordered. But it was plain there was nothing to be done, and indeed old Stanley was dead before the doctor arrived, about ten minutes later.

Gerald Park, a weedy, rather slick fellow in the early twenties, was clad in smart clothes now gone to seed, rather shamefacedly "supposed" that the sight of him had given his uncle the shock that killed him. He admitted his uncle had good cause for anger against him he'd behaved like a heartless young fool. Although his uncle had taken him into his home when his father died a few years ago, and had been as kind as his strict nature allowed, he, Gerald, had played fast and loose, got himself into bad company and ways and ended-well, by robbing his uncle on the sly.

He hadn't any excuse. Of course, he'd hoped to pay the money back sometime, and he probably would have if someone hadn't sneaked to his uncle and so caused the final explosion. After that he hadn't a chance. His uncle was terribly down on that sort of thing. He'd been absolutely beside himself with fury and had turned Gerald out of his house then and there. That was his way. Drove his own nephew right out of his life from that moment, warning him never on any account to show his face in Friars' Vale again.

Perhaps he oughtn't to have risked coming back, seeing how bitterly the old man felt, but, as he'd said, he was absolutely on the rocks and had to get money somehow and then, how was he to know that the sight of him would have such a fatal effect?

A straightforward story. Gra.s.s, the taxi-driver, not only confirmed it, but strengthened it by several items Gerald Park had left unsaid.

For instance, he had kept his taxi waiting beside the door because Gerald had given him the wink . . . Well, wink was a manner of speaking. Gerald had asked him to wait in a sheepish sort of way, and Gra.s.s, knowing how things were between old Stanley and that young blackg- this nephew of his, as all the village did, antic.i.p.ated a quick return fare with Gerald being booted out.

While Gra.s.s waited he watched Gerald. That was easy. Gerald left the front door wide open for a quick run out, of course, should his uncle turn nasty. As the sitting-room door was just to the left of the hall, Gra.s.s naturally saw Gerald open that. Saw him all the time, in fact, for he never really went over the threshold of the sitting-room-never had the chance from the look of it.

Yes, Gerald stopped dead in the doorway. He seemed scared to go in. Gra.s.s heard him call out loud something like, "But, Uncle, give me a chance . . ." After that there was a crash inside the room, and Gerald turned a frightened face over his shoulder, yelling that his uncle had had a fit or something.

Gerald was so paralysed with surprise that Gra.s.s had to push him out of the sitting-room doorway to get at the old man. He found Stanley Park in a heap beside his arm-chair-yes, right across the room, by the fire and, from the look of him, there wasn't much chance. Oh, he was still alive, but it was plain his heart had burst or something, at the sight of Gerald, and it was all u.p.

No, Gerald hadn't gone near him. He stood hovering away off by the door like a frightened puppy, until, suddenly, he thought of the brandy and Mrs Ferris. Gra.s.s had heard him yelling for Mrs Ferris. She came in ahead of Gerald, who handed her the brandy and gla.s.s; he was still that scared and helpless. In fact, the only thing the feller did try to do was to take off his coat and hand it to him to put under his uncle's head. Even then Mrs Ferris had stopped him and made him fetch a cushion instead.

Mrs Ferris, a rabbit-mouthed, but plump and motherly sort of woman, bore all this out. She had been at the scullery sink washing the breakfast things when she heard Master Gerald call. She had come at once, after drying her hands. Master Gerald was coming from the dining-room with the brandy and gla.s.s in his hands as she reached the sitting-room door. He shouted that his uncle had been taken ill, and she ran into the sitting-room. She didn't like the look of the old gentleman at all, and sent Gra.s.s for the doctor.

No, it was she who gave that order; maybe Master Gerald repeated it to Gra.s.s, but the poor boy was so terribly upset he did not know what he was doing. Yes, he stood about helpless the other side of the room, so flummoxed at what had happened that he seemed terrified of coming near his uncle. Yes, he did take off his coat for his uncle's head, which only showed how struck all-of-a-heap the poor boy was, seeing he could have reached for any of three cushions from the settee.

Mrs Ferris's manner made it plain that she had a warm corner in her heart for Gerald. She agreed that he'd been wild and reckless, and that his uncle had been terribly set against him because of his theft. But she held he'd been led away by his kind heart. Also, though she didn't want to cast no aspersions, there was those who had worked against him, too. Yes, Miss Barbara Tabard, if they must have it. All she would say was that if Miss Barbara had only let well alone, poor old Mr Stanley would be alive and happy now.

Miss Barbara Tabard was the reason why we were in the case. She was the daughter of Stanley Park's sister, and she and Gerald were the only living relatives of the dead man. She lived in Stripe, where she taught in an elementary school, for she was an independent, pretty, and vehement girl in the middle twenties.

For these reasons she had an enmity for Gerald, whom she considered a slimy, unscrupulous little sponger who had wormed his way into their uncle's good graces solely to feather his own nest. She had already told us quite frankly that it was she who had discovered his thefts and so caused the break between him and his uncle.

Barbara had made the twenty minutes' journey from Stripe immediately on receiving the wire about her uncle's death. Finding Gerald on the scene, she had become suspicious at once. Also she found Stanley Park's doctor puzzled. He could not understand how the old man had come to die from heart failure-as it seemed. Only a few months before, he had given Stanley Park a thorough overhaul, and his heart had then been as sound as a bell. Of course, a shock might have made a difference, but he was perplexed.

Barbara had seized on that ("She would," Grimes had snarled). She at once became sure there had been foul play. She declared that Gerald would stop at nothing when it was a question of money. And there was a question of money. Stanley Park had been a rich man. He had meant the bulk of his fortune to go to Gerald, as his natural heir, with a smaller sum for her, Barbara. But after Gerald's exposure and disgrace he had decided to make a fresh will, cutting Gerald out entirely and leaving everything to her.

Gerald, Barbara insisted, must have learnt that he was altering his will and so taken a desperate step to prevent his own disinheritance. The doctor and even the local sergeant thought her suspicions too wild in the face of the evidence, but the impetuous girl promptly tackled the indulgent Mrs Ferris and forced from her an admission that, not only had she been in correspondence with Gerald, but that she had told him that his uncle had actually made an appointment with his lawyer for the next week in order do put the alteration of his will finally in hand.

On learning that, Miss Barbara went off the deep end, as the local sergeant put it, telling him that if he did not move she herself would go to headquarters at Stripe and force the police to take action. As she was plainly the sort to keep her word-with interest the hara.s.sed sergeant decided that the best way out would be to let Stripe hold the baby, so to speak; so he had 'phoned headquarters. That was why Inspector Grimes and Paul Toft had picked me up at my consulting-room on the way to Friars' Vale. As Medical Officer I might find something that Stanley Park's doctor had missed. But they hadn't much hope. As Grimes said when we'd finished with the witnesses.

"Sheer waste of time an' tissue. On the face of it, this Gerald Park never had a chance o' doing anything to his uncle, even if he wanted to. There never was a case in it . . ."

"I don't know . . . I feel . . ." Paul Toft muttered, and at that ominous "Kill," we swung on him and gaped. He had not uncoiled his lank limbs, but his left hand was churning away at a soft piece of india-rubber, that unmistakable sign that his queer mind had sensed crime.

"But but you can't feel," Grimes protested. "Everything's against foul play. There's no hint of wound or bruise on the body, for instance, an' there couldn't be. Gerald never went within fifteen feet of his uncle. An' that taxi-driver, who was watching him all the time, saw nothing suspicious."

"Yes, that taxi-odd," Paul Toft's great domed forehead frowned. "Less than ten minutes' walk from the station yet this youngster, though he's financially on the rocks, took a taxi . . . Queer extravagance, eh?"

"No! Just the sort o' fool thing his sort does," Grimes was curtly brushing the suggestion away, when I found myself blurting with that strange impulse that is so often helpful to Toft's curious gift: "That driver made a very useful witness, though. Only one who could, with those trees screening the carriage-way. That might be a reason for taking a taxi . . . And doesn't he seem to have made the most of it? I mean leaving the front door open and so forth."

"That's been explained," Grimes began, but Toft flashed at me the smile that always tells I have given him a lead, and nodded.

"Ah, Doctor, you always touch the point . . . You're right. There's a certain overemphasis . . . His strange keeping away from his uncle, for instance . . . He let the taxi-driver and Mrs Ferris do everything while he stood afar off. Seems a bit over-done-pointed . . ."

"Yes," I agreed, "as though he was definitely trying to create the impression that he could not possibly have had anything to do with his uncle's death."

"What you mean you think he had?" Grimes cried.

"I feel yes, I feel that murder was done here," Paul Toft said with his most dreamy conviction.

We stared at him. When Paul Toft talked like that we no longer scoffed, he'd proved those extraordinary "feelings" of his too often. But even I could not feel quite convinced. If ever there was a case when the whole ma.s.s of the evidence made murder seem quite impossible, this was it. In fact, Grimes all but bellowed: "How in the name o' Job did he do it then? Look, the old man was in this chair, by the fireplace. Gerald stood in the door there, fifteen feet away. He was under observation all the time. He simply couldn't ha' done a thing, or raised a hand without the taxi-man knowing all about it. How then? Did he mesmerise the old chap to death-or what?"

Even Toft had no answer to that. On the face of it, it was quite impossible for Gerald Park to have struck his uncle down. Unless, as I said: "He shot him from the doorway."

Directly I spoke I knew I'd said a foolish thing. Though Toft looked at me sharply, Grimes let go a savage bark. "Funny how we've all overlooked the loud report of a pistol. A darn loud report, get me, seeing it was fired inside the house. I wonder why the taxi-driver forgot to mention hearing a little thing like that . . . aye, an' seeing Gerald using his pistol."

I wanted to kick myself for blurting without thinking. Not only would it have been impossible for the taxi-man to miss such pistol play, Mrs Ferris must have heard the report too. Crestfallen, then, I was surprised when Toft unlimbered his reedy limbs, and, ignoring Grimes' "What the devil ?" crossed to the door to call the taxi-man into the room again.

But even the suggestion of hope that brought proved vain. The taxi-man was as contemptuous of the pistol idea as Grimes.

"A pistol? Not a chance," he said emphatically. "I tell you I had my eyes on Gerald all the time . . . Expecting fireworks when his uncle saw him, you see. He couldn't ha' used a pistol without my seeing-let alone me hearing."

"That's sure-you heard nothing?" Grimes insisted.

"Not a thing-an' I know what pistols sound like, too."

"He might have been using one with a silencer," I put in. "You say he called out loudly to his uncle . . ."

"He did, sir. But that made no manner o' difference. I mean, I'm ready to swear there wasn't even the ghost of another noise."

"Your engine was still running though," Toft put in.

"Maybe," the man shrugged. "But that wouldn't make any difference. We get so used to it we hear other sounds agin it and I'd have heard even a silencer. . . . An' then, as I say, I was watching him close. He didn't make the motions like shooting. Just stood still an' stiff all the time."

"How can you be so sure?" I objected. "Can you remember exactly how he stood?"