Death-Watch (20 page)

“I’m going out on business, surprisingly enough,” she said, smiling at Hadley. “But I thought I could catch you here before I went. D’you mind coming to the telephone?”

“Right. Tell them to—”

“Oh, it’s not your office. It’s about that alibi of mine,” she explained, composedly. “You know, for the afternoon of Tuesday a week ago. I told you I would look it up in my diary, and I was right. It
was
the day of the cocktail party. So this morning I rang up the man and his wife who gave the party; I remember now that I got there about half-past four and stayed until seven. Ken is on the wire now, and both he and his wife are willing to give me corroboration. He’s an artist, but he does magazine covers and should be respectable enough for you. There are others, of course … I know you’ll have to check up all this in person, but I wish you’d speak to him now and let me get it off my mind. It’s been worrying me, rather.”

Hadley nodded, with a significant glance at Dr. Fell, and Hadley seemed pleased as he followed her out. Dr. Fell did not look pleased. He lumbered out after them, but he went no farther than the hallway. When Melson closed the door behind him, after a word of thanks to Carver, he found the doctor standing broad-legged in the gloom, his shovel-hat stuck on the back of his head, pounding one cane slowly on the carpet with a sort of repressed fury. Melson had never seen him like this. Melson felt again the sense of unknown terrors gathering and darkening. Dr. Fell started when he spoke to him, and peered round.

“Eh? Oh, I can’t stop it,” he said, with a baffled stamp of the cane. “I see it coming. I’ve seen it gradually drawing near every hour we’ve been in this damned place, and I’m as helpless as a man in a nightmare. The devil never is in a hurry. And how can I stop it? What tangible evidence have I got to lay before twelve good men and true, and say—”

“Look here, what ails you?” demanded Melson, who was beginning now to feel jumpy at each footfall or opened door. “You seem upset because this Handreth girl has proved her innocence with regard to the department-store murder.”

“I am,” nodded Dr. Fell. “But then I am always rather upset when I see an innocent person in danger of being hanged.”

Melson stared at him. “You mean that the Handreth girl really—”

“Steady!” said Dr. Fell, sharply.

Hadley, his jaw muscles tight with satisfaction, bowed Lucia Handreth ahead of him out of the room opposite. She settled her gloves between the finger-joints, gave her hat a final pat, and said:

“You feel better now, Mr. Hadley?”

“I shall have to check up, of course, but—”

She nodded quietly. “Yes. Still, I think it will do. I may go now? Good. You may still search my rooms, if you like. Good morning.” The pointed teeth showed in a broad smile, and her brown eyes gleamed. Then the hollow slam of the front door, the rattle of its chain, went up in echoes that were caught by the heightened murmur of the crowd still milling outside. Through the narrow sidewindows on either side of the door fell faint light. Melson could see the area rails, and eager faces, open-mouthed, swaying back and forth over them like heads on spikes. A camera was raised high, and a flash-bulb glared against the autumnal sky. Then Melson became aware that Hadley, behind him, was humming some fragment under his breath as though he was pleased. Melson was not well acquainted with popular songs, but he could not help knowing that one. Words stood out:

“—
din’ for the last round up …
” Then Hadley spoke incisively. “That woman’s out of it, Fell. Aside from that artist fellow, there seemed to be a whole crowd there having rather a noisy breakfast. They all tried to talk, and they all said the same thing. So—”

“Come upstairs,” said Dr. Fell. “Don’t argue; come upstairs.

There’s one last thing, and we must find it out.”

He stumped ahead, making little noise on the muffling carpet, and they followed him. Hadley, seeming to remember the handkerchief he had been holding in his hand for some time, began to speak; but Dr. Fell silenced him with a fierce gesture. The double doors of Boscombe’s room were slightly open. After a perfunctory knock he opened them. The remnants of a breakfast were on the table, and the curtains drawn wide. Boscombe, fastidiously dressed, looking sallow and withered against the daylight, was pouring himself a whisky and soda at the sideboard. He swung round, his hand on the syphon.

“Good morning,” said Dr. Fell. “We’ve been talking to Carver— an exceedingly interesting conversation. He’s been telling us all about watches, and we’re rather interested in that skull-watch you bought. Would you mind letting us see it?”

Boscombe’s eyes darted to the brass box. He hesitated, and suddenly looked even more sallow and withered, as though he could not get his breath, and nevertheless fought for something.

“Yes,” he said, “I would mind. Get out.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t choose to show it to you,” the man returned with an effort. His voice rose harshly. “It happens to belong to me, and nobody is going to see it unless I say so. If you imagine that merely because you have police powers you can do as you bloody well like, then you’ll find you’re mistaken.”

Dr. Fell took a tentative step forward. Boscombe yanked open the drawer of the sideboard and slid his hand inside. He braced himself backwards.

“I warn you what you’re doing is robbery. If you so much as touch that box, I’ll—”

“Shoot?”

“Yes, damn you!”

Something in his voice cried out in a sheer pale fury of humiliation that his bluff had been called once, but he did not mean to have it called again. Hadley muttered an oath and jumped forward. And then Melson realized that Dr. Fell was chuckling.

“Boscombe,” said the doctor, quietly, “if anybody had told me last night that at some future time I should rather like you, I’d have called him a liar … I am changing my mind a little. At least you have guts enough and affection enough in that little soul of yours to protect
somebody,
even if you happen to be wrong about who—”

“Look here, what the devil is all this about?” demanded Hadley. “The Maurer skull-watch has been stolen,” said Dr. Fell. “But not, I suspect, by the person Boscombe is afraid stole it. You’ll be interested, Hadley. That watch happens to be worth three thousand pounds. And it’s gone.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” said Dr. Fell, sharply. “You’ll be questioned about it at the inquest, and if you can’t produce it …”

Boscombe turned back to the sideboard and reached for the soda-syphon again. “I shall be under no necessity to produce it. If I happened to have loaned it to a friend of mine before this affair occurred, that is my own concern and nobody else’s.” The hiss of the soda-syphon rose loudly. He turned to face them.

“In fact,” observed Dr. Fell, blankly, “it shakes you up when somebody stalks boldly into your room and accuses you of a decent act. It must upset your pride in yourself. Come out of it, man! The world isn’t such a miserably rotten place that you’ve always got to keep kicking it because you’re afraid it may kick you. As for—”

A voice in the doorway behind said in a quick, shaky, confidential tone,

“I say, old boy …”

Then it gulped. They looked round, to see a stoutish young man peering forward into the room. With one hand he clutched round his throat the collar of a rumpled silk dressing-gown and held hard to the door-post with the other. His thin blond hair was ruffled; his face, which must ordinarily have been fresh-coloured, was pale and hazy, with gummy eyes which held a rather horrorstruck look. Although he was not wavering, his expression conveyed that if he let go the door-post he would rise and hover in the air. His voice was quick, slurred, and jerky, even now when it had taken on a hoarsely confidential air.

“I say, old boy,” he repeated, clearing his throat, “could you give me a spot, by any chance? Rotten luck. I—I seem to have smashed the last bottle or lost it or something. Appreciate it frightfully …”

He appeared chilled. Boscombe looked at him, then took up the bottle, spilled more whisky into the drink he was carrying, and held it out. The newcomer, who Melson supposed could be nobody else than Mr. Christopher Paull, let go the door-post and his dressing-gown, and hurried forward with that same vaguely horrified look, as though he could not believe in the existence of any state of nerves so hideous as the one he felt. Mr. Paull was barefoot and his pyjama parts did not match. Mr. Paull seemed full of jangled piano-wires. After accepting the glass from Boscombe, he held it blankly for several seconds; then said, “Well, cheerio,” faintly, and drank, and shivered.

“Hhhh-ooo!” said Mr. Paull. His smile was spectral. “I say, old boy. Guests. Most frightfully sorry you have guests. Er—” He wiped his toothbrush moustache with the back of his hand nervously. “You know how it is. Regimental dinner or something. ‘Boys of the bulldog breed,’ and all that. Or was it? Can’t imagine how it happened, or getting home. ‘Boys of the bulldog breed, Hooray’— somebody sang that, I know. I say, old boy; frightfully sorry, you know.” He drank again. The voice of eager contrition was immersed in gurgles. “Haaa. That’s better.”

“Then you don’t know,” Boscombe said, sharply, “what happened last night?”

“Good God! What did I do?” said Paull, and suddenly took the glass from his mouth.

“You didn’t,” interposed Hadley, “you didn’t by any chance commit murder, did you?”

Paull backed away. The glass wabbled in his hand and he had to put it down on the sideboard. For a moment he stared incredulously; then fear came into his sticky eyes. His voice grew querulously uncertain.

“I say. I say, this is no time to pull a fellow’s leg.” He looked at Boscombe. “I say, old boy, who are these fellers? Tick ’em off. Tick ’em off good and proper. Dammit, putting the wind up a man feels like I do; damned bad form, if you ask me. Who are these fellers? Commit murder? My God! What rot!”

He reached for his glass again, and his hand nearly missed it. “I happen to be from the C. I. D.—from Scotland Yard,” said

Hadley, raising his voice as though he were speaking to a deaf person. “And I suppose you are Mr. Christopher Paull. A police officer was murdered here last night while he was coming up those stairs. At the head of the stairs, as a matter of fact …”

“Rot! You’re pulling—”

“I am not. He was stabbed to death not very far from your own door. We have evidence to the fact that you arrived here last night at about seven-thirty, and must have been in your room at the time. I want to know whether you know anything about it.”

Paull looked at Boscombe, who nodded. He became very quiet, whether from sheer shock and fright Melson could not tell; but for a time he could not speak. Several repetitions of the statement were necessary. He went over to a chair and sat down, putting his glass on the table beside him.

“Well, Mr. Paull?”

“I don’t know! My God! You don’t think
I
did it, do you?”

“No. We only want to know whether you heard or saw anything, or whether you were in a condition to hear or see anything.”

Paull seemed a little reassured, and his breathing grew more quiet. Pressing his hands over his eyes, he rocked back and forth.

“Can’t
think,
confound it! Can’t get a blasted thing straight in my head. Everything in such a muddle; damned bad form spring a thing like this on me … Police officer gettin’ killed, what rot … Stop a bit!”

He looked up blearily.

“There was something … can’t quite get it straight. Some time. When? Let me see. No, I dreamed it. Often think you get up in the dark and you don’t. What rot. I thought—”

As though to drive away a phantom of recollection, his hand stole to the pocket of the dressing-gown and fumbled there. It found something, for his expression changed. Out of his pocket, dazedly, he drew a woman’s black kid glove, turned partly inside out. As he turned it over a small key fell from one of the glove-fingers and gleamed on the floor; and the palm of the glove was dully streaked with gilt paint.

M
OMENTARILY HADLEY STOOD FROZEN.
Then he bent over and took the glove out of Christopher Paull’s limp hand. Carrying it to one window, he examined the palm against dull grey light. Beyond him the branches of the great maple, as yet scarcely tinged with yellow, almost touched the window, and a draught blew through the broken pane. Hadley touched the gilt stains; then he ran his finger along other stains, evidently not yet quite dry.

“Blood,” he said.

The quiet word echoed. It seemed all the more ugly uttered in this big room with its sombre books and the leering Hogarth prints on the walls. Returning without hurry, quietly inexorable, Hadley picked up the little key. When he backed away to get the light, this time it was he who stood up against the tall leather screen painted with flames and saffron crosses. Hadley’s face looked grey, his eyes hard black, his jaw pleased. From his pocket he took the key Carver had given him downstairs, the key to the door on the landing. He fitted it against the other, holding them both up against the light. They were exactly the same. Then he put the keys into different pockets.

“Now, Mr. Paull,” he said, “you will tell us how you happen to have this glove.”

“I don’t know, I tell you!” cried the other, with a kind of groan. “Can’t you give a chap a chance to think? Maybe if I have a chance to think I can get the beastly thing straight. Got an idea—can’t think— picked it up somewhere? Did I? Got an idea—talking to some woman. On the stairs. No, that was Aunt Steffins. She put my necktie in my pocket. There were lights on then. Don’t know why I remember that.”

“Do you know who owns this glove?”

“Good God, its not mine! Take it away, can’t you? How should I know?” He regarded it doubtfully, as a man might get closer to a snake he is assured is harmless. “Woman’s glove. Might be anybody’s … I say, old boy, let me have another, will you? I’m quite sober. I feel like hell, but I’m quite sober. Buck me up if I do.”

“You, Mr. Boscombe?”

Boscombe’s nostrils twitched; but he remained motionless, his arms folded, against the sideboard. Again he was fighting for something. He barely glanced at the glove.