Eight Murders In the Suburbs (22 page)

She would not, the doctor asserted, need medical attention on the way. He had other cases on hand and did not feel justified in doing a job that Mr. Hudson himself could do perfectly well.

“All right, then, I'd better go myself,” said George—but did not go. Instead, he sent the cook—who returned out of temper close upon midnight unaccompanied by her mistress.

Mrs. Hudson, she reported, had had a second attack and although she had recovered, she had no confidence in her ability to accomplish the journey home without her husband.

George did nothing that night nor the following morning. About midday came another long telegram, urging him to come at once and help her home. He showed it to the cook who pointed out that it would be useless for her to make a second journey.

“All right, then, I'd better go myself,” said George for the second time and, being short of loose cash, borrowed eight shillings from the cook and left the house.

But he did not go to Walsall Place. He went to a boarding house in Bloomsbury and lay low for a week, assuming that his wife would go home by herself. The newspapers at that time were making much of the Baroda case (a case of lapsed memory), and he intended to say that he had set out for Walsall Place and that before arriving he, like the notorious Baroda, had suffered a lapse of memory.

It does not seem to have occurred to George Hudson that his wife was genuinely fond of him. Alternatively, he does not seem to have guessed that a reasonably loving wife would be, not offended, but alarmed.

A confused exchange of telegrams was followed by a reappearance of the cook at Walsall Place. Nothing but an accident or worse, asserted Mrs. Hudson, could have prevented George from coming to her aid. What more natural, therefore, than that, before returning home with the cook, she should inform the police of her husband's mysterious disappearance.

At Scotland Yard the name “George Hudson” came indirectly to the notice of Sergeant Haskins, who a year ago had been employed in the search for Ethel Mollett. It was a funny thing, he thought, that now it should be George's turn to disappear—but it was no more than a funny thing. On the face of it there could be no logical connection between the two events. It was nothing but sheer red tape which compelled him to send a memo to the Department of Dead Ends.

The hospitals yielding no information, Haskins took the train to Guildford and there saw among others the doctor and the cook.

“Looks like one of these cases of a lapse of memory!” thought the Sergeant who had also read about Baroda.

But, lapse of memory or not, George could not live for very long on the cook's eight shillings; so to be on the safe side, Haskins interviewed the manager of George's bank.

Two days later Haskins was informed by telephone that Hudson's cheque for ten pounds had been cleared through the account of a boarding house in Bloomsbury. Haskins sent a junior to the boarding house, who presently telephoned that George had just sat down to lunch.

The chase was at an end and the Department of Dead Ends was duly informed that the case was solved.

Superintendent Tarrant applied the old formula of assuming that a logical connection existed between events palpably unconnected.

Applying the formula, a conclusion emerged—that George had shown a calculated and systematic unwillingness to call at No. 7 Walsall Place. By means of this kind of semi-scientific guesswork, on which the theory of the department was based, Tarrant guessed that George Hudson's unwillingness was concerned with the disappearance of Ethel Mollett.

He instructed one of his own juniors to bring Mrs. Sidwell, the landlady, without fail to the Yard at three o'clock—and at three o'clock he himself walked in with an amiably chattering George Hudson, ostensibly to settle some formality in regard to his “disappearance.”

On the way to Tarrant's room the unsuspecting George was seen and recognised by Mrs. Sidwell. The supposed formality was soon completed and George departed to make the best job he could of the lapse-of-memory story to his devoted wife.

But a double relief of plainclothes men were told off to escort George unobtrusively to Guildford, and to keep a watch on him.

In the meantime Superintendent Tarrant learned from Mrs. Sidwell that George Hudson, under the name of Wall, had lived at her house with a young woman—at the very time when he was playing the grief-stricken lover and urging the Yard to redouble their efforts to find his missing bride-to-be, Ethel Mollett.

Where did the couple go when they left her? Mrs. Sidwell was sure she couldn't say, but she had heard them talking about a house they had seen once and were going to see again. She did not know where the house was, but she thought you must go to it from Waterloo Station, as they had run from her house to catch the train on the first occasion.

A police circular was promptly sent to all the police stations on the line within one hundred miles of London, instructing them to make inquiries of all their local house agents.

Two days later Superintendent Tarrant was talking to the Surbiton house agent who told him all he knew of “Mr. Wall,” bringing in, almost as an afterthought, the story of the proposed fish pond.

That afternoon, by the courteous permission of the dentist who still tenanted the house Scotland Yard began digging.

Hudson was hanged in August.

It is debatable whether the man who is in love with his own moral rectitude is a shining example to others or a bit of a stumbling block. In the matter of Elsie Potter, Jeremy Grantham—even his name has a ring of sternness—tried himself at the bar of his own conscience and gave himself a brutally stiff sentence. Anybody could have told him that this sort of thing is a moral fatuity, but few would have prophesied that it would lead to murder.

As to Elsie Potter, she was no more of a humbug than many another good-looking girl who works fairly hard for a living but yearns for a life of well-fed indolence—to be obtained on give-and-take terms, which include somewhere a niche for her self-respect.

In no sense did Elsie ensnare him. She had never attempted to ensnare anybody. She meant to do so, one day, but kept putting it off, partly through lack of raw material. But she did spend a disproportionately large slice of her salary, as a pool typist in a fancy goods factory, on personal adornment. Grantham was a provincial wholesaler in stationery and fancy goods and Elsie was lent to him by her employers who were putting on a special evening display at the Business Exhibition at Olympia in 1931.

The special display was over by ten. Grantham, a townsman of some importance in Benchester, was unsure of himself in London. He was not certain whether he was expected to tip her, and shrank from experimenting. Her business manners were good. He invited her to supper.

She left the talking to him, thereby leading him to believe that she was attentive and sympathetic. A slightly idealised version of his life story emerged, revealing sundry wistful little virtues of his own which had hitherto escaped his notice. He enjoyed his supper, which ended all too soon.

“There are people waiting for our table. Would you mind coming to the hotel, Miss Potter, to read over your notes?” Apart from the notes, he wanted to describe his reactions when his father's failing health had compelled him to enter the family business, though he had always felt that he had been meant for a very different kind of life.

“Certainly, Mr. Grantham!” said Elsie, with no other thought in her mind than that the firm was paying her overtime. She had not considered him as a man, because he seemed to her to be ‘old,' though he was but hovering on the brink of his fortieth birthday. All the same, she had noticed that he was good looking ‘in a way'—rather like the sheriffs in the Western films—the good ones under a cloud who were too proud to explain until the end.

He had a two-room suite in the Gulverbury Hotel. We are not concerned with the details of Jeremy Grantham's breach of his own somewhat rigid code, except to emphasise that it was unpremeditated. He was unconscious of depravity when he thanked her for her company. Elsie took it for granted that he would give her a goodbye kiss—which was only fair, after that expensive supper!—and to that extent may have put the idea into his head, not suspecting that it was, to him, a revolutionary idea.

The kiss, in fact, caused havoc in the brain of Jeremy Grantham. He used neither force nor artifice to induce her to stay. With compelling sincerity he stammered out a tale of inner loneliness and frustration—which was such unexpected behaviour on the part of the good sheriff that Elsie was fascinated. He was old, of course, but not wrinkled, or anything.

Jeremy Grantham was awakened by the clatter of a spoon in a tea cup. He was one of those heavy sleepers who require several seconds to get their bearings. He stared at Elsie in alarm.

“The chambermaid brought your tea. She got a bit of a shock when I opened the door.” Elsie set the tray on a bedside table. “You go ahead. I don't take early tea—it's bad for you, at my age.”

She had bathed, but was not fully dressed. She was wearing his raincoat, after rolling back the sleeves, and knew that she looked ridiculous. As Grantham sat bolt upright in bed and continued to stare at her, she slipped out of the coat.

When he spoke, his voice was rather like that of a bad sheriff, though he used posh words, like the directors.

“I congratulate you! I walked into the trap as carelessly as some loose young undergraduate.”

“Trap!” echoed Elsie, puzzled. “What trap? Come on, tell me what you mean by ‘trap.' I want to know.”

“You've earned your laugh at my expense. I'll own up I was taken in by your friendliness and what I believed to be the kindness of your nature.”

“I can't help what you thought. What d'you mean by ‘trap'?”

“It ended in my spending the night with you!”

“I like
that
! I definitely do!” Elsie, as she would have expressed it, could hardly believe her ears. “You're making out it was all my fault. You weren't drunk—you can remember what happened if you choose to. When I said it was getting late and you said it had been a pleasant evening, I was going straight out of here. And then you started asking me to stay. And I told you at first I didn't want to. And you kept on at me, saying it was a matter of life an' death and all that, and in the end I said I would. D' you remember that, or don't you?” She repeated: “Or don't you?”

Before all else Grantham was, he had so often told himself, a completely truthful man.

“Yes—I remember!” The words had come with difficulty. “I apologise. I spoke hastily.”

“You did!” She put on her dress, giving him an odd sense of being thrust back again into the fog of inhibition from which he had escaped.

“I have behaved unforgiveably,” he faltered. “I have done a great wrong. I must make amends.”

Her laugh jarred his whole nervous system.

“Make amends, eh! With a handout of
cash
, eh!” she shrilled. “I know! I've read about your sort in books. There's just one thing you've got dead wrong, Mr. Grantham. It isn't you that's been a fool over this. It's me!”

After she had gone he sat long, upright in the bed, staring at the wallpaper. At eleven, the transcription of his notes arrived by special messenger. By twelve, he had concluded his meditation, whereupon he proceeded to prompt and effective action.

When Elsie returned to her desk after the lunch interval she found a slip on her typewriter in red ink.

‘Miss Potter to report to Mr. J. Grantham at Gulverbury Hotel.'

I believe that man is loopey, she told herself. Loopey enough to tell the firm? Hardly! More likely, he was trying to stage a come-back by finding fault with her script. Some men were mean enough for anything!

When she was shown into his sitting-room, he did not look loopey. He looked once more like the good sheriff, just before the happy ending.

“You did me an injustice this morning, Miss Potter, when you assumed that I intended to offer you money. That would have been to double my offence.”

“Well, I'm sure I don't want to talk about it, if you don't!”

“Please allow me to speak first.” He placed a chair for her and she sat down obediently. “After you left here, I reviewed the circumstances in minute detail. I acquit myself only of deceit. What I told you about myself was wholly true. It is true that I have never kissed a woman until I kissed you.”

That, thought Elsie, explained a lot. Her rancour vanished.

“I do not put that forward as an excuse for my subsequent conduct. I repeat that I wish to make amends. I want you to marry me.”

“
Ooh
!” The life of well-fed indolence was beckoning. Not on the swimming pool scale, of course, but perhaps an eight-roomed house and two resident servants—the respectful kind—who would admire her clothes. There remained only the question of that awkward little niche for the self respect.

“I don't know what to say, Mr. Grantham, reelly! I'm sorry I was rude this morning, not understanding what was in your mind. And now you ask me to marry you!” The niche, after all, might as well be a roomy one. “I only want to say—well, I mean you don't have to feel you ought to marry me if you don't want to. Doing me wrong, and all that! It's nice of you to put it that way. But it's only fair to say I knew what I was doing and I could have walked out of here, all right, if I'd reelly wanted to.”

She expected a gracious acknowledgement, but he only bowed as if he wished she would stop talking.

“I am waiting for your answer, Miss Potter. Will you agree to marry me?”

He was loopey, of course, in a way. But a girl had to take care of herself, and she had given him a fair chance to back out. No one could say she had laid a trap for him. Come to think of it, he wasn't really old at all, if you looked at him properly.