The Z Murders (4 page)

Chapter V

The Girl

Temperley stared at the crimson Z for a moment without comprehension. It might mean so many things that, at first sight, it meant nothing. Then the moment of astounded stupor passed, and was followed by a reaction so swift and violent that it sent a pang of definite pain through him. Whatever might be the precise significance of this ominous token, one thing was glaringly clear; it brought the menace of the hotel smoking-room direct to Studio No. 4, Tail Street, and coupled Sylvia Wynne with the mystery of John Amble's murder.

But as an accomplice or as a victim? As the question stabbed into his brain he shoved the front door wide and dashed inside. An insignificant hall, with little room for more than three hooks and a hat stand, widened out into the studio, and with the night shadows scarcely yet lifted the room looked larger to Temperley's anxious eyes than it actually was. The cushions of a settee on the left billowed unpleasantly in the dimness, giving Temperley a momentary and erroneous impression that a figure was lying upon it. Beyond the settee, dark space. On the right, an easel loomed. Its mission was art, but viewed now it looked like some instrument of torture. A small stool was by the easel, and a large chair was beyond it. The large chair had its back to Temperley, and the back was sufficiently capacious to conceal a slim form. On the point of dashing to the chair, he stopped, and received yet another shock. Some one was moving towards a window across the room. The north window was above, but the window which now arrested Temperley's attention was in the opposite wall. It was a fair-sized piece of glass, and though not the principal means of bringing daylight into the studio, it was quite big enough for a human form to pass through.

A corner of the room, on the side where the easel stood, was curtained off, and Temperley made a sudden dive for this sanctuary. As he passed beyond the curtain into the little recess it partitioned, his face brushed a dress, and he suppressed a quick gasp; but the dress swayed and yielded before his sudden pressure, and he realised that it contained no inmate. A faint perfume rose to his nostrils, the sole consolation of this unpleasant moment.

The curtain behind which he stood concealed was not opaque, but it was not sufficiently thin for his strained eyes to pierce with any distinctness. Though he brought his eyes close he could merely record a vague impression of lights and shadows. But one light, through the right side of the curtain, was fairly definite, and when a shadow entered into it and almost obliterated it, Temperley needed nothing more to tell him what was happening. The person who had been moving towards the window had now reached it, and was peering in.

There was a moment of dead silence. Then a new noise fell upon Temperley's ears. The person outside was opening the window.

A sentence flashed into Temperley's mind, darting from the cells of memory in obedience to the instant. “John Amble was shot from the window!” And, afterwards, the murderer had left his symbol upon the ground!

Now, at this moment, a similar symbol lay on a strip of blue carpet just inside the front door. And, a few feet away, was an arm-chair with a high back…

“God!” thought Temperley, his forehead suddenly streaming, and he dashed the curtain aside.

As he did so, the person who had been outside the window dropped softly on to the studio floor, and the studio floor began to swim. Temperley found himself staring at Sylvia Wynne.

She, also, was staring. But she was not staring at Temperley. She was staring right across the room, towards the little hall and the open front door, and she was so absorbed that she did not hear Temperley's movements as he drew the curtain aside. She seemed to be—and was—thinking, “Who opened that door?”

Perhaps five seconds passed statuesquely. A picture he had remembered since boyhood—it had hung in his father's hall—came queerly into Temperley's mind. Of a snake eyeing a small rabbit-like creature, and of a tiger eyeing, from tall jungle grasses, the snake. There was no similarity of psychology between the picture of the jungle and the picture in this studio, but “The Watcher Watched” could have been the title of either.…Then, all at once, the watched watcher in the studio became conscious of another presence, and turned her head. “Steady!” muttered Temperley.

She was swaying.

Before he knew it he was at her side supporting her. She made no protest, seeming to be caught in a momentary overwhelming weakness, and she permitted herself to be helped to the couch. Then, while she sank down upon it, Temperley ran quickly to the front door and closed it.

He closed the door in obedience to a blind instinct of self-preservation in which, naturally, the girl was included. For her sake, also, he picked the metal Z from the ground and slipped it into his pocket. Then he returned into the studio and, without a word, crossed to the window through which the girl had come.

He noted that the catch was defective, but he pushed the window to, even though he could not fasten it. After that, he turned once more to the girl.

She was not sitting as he had left her. She was on her feet again, her paleness replaced by a flush. In the studio she looked less tall than she had looked on the dark station platform and at the hotel, but she did not look less attractive, and her beauty was now enhanced by the background of definite menace.

“You don't wait to ask permission, do you?” she challenged suddenly, like a boxer rising from a count of nine and rushing in gamely to receive the knockout.

“I'm sorry—but I'm doing it for you,” answered Temperley.

“I don't understand!”

“Of course, you don't! Nor do I! Please sit down again. You look about dead. I don't suppose I can get you anything?”

She sat down. His tone, as well as his words, had their effect. But Temperley could see that she was still very much on the defensive, and he hoped he would soon find some means of removing the doubt that still shone in her eyes.

“How did you get in here?” she demanded.

“Through the door, not the window,” he smiled.

“But
how
?”

“I rang. No one came. So I used a latch-key.” She stared at him. “You see, Miss Wynne, I've come to return your purse to you.”

“My purse. Then—I
did
leave it—!”

Her hand went to her heart. He nodded gravely.

“In the smoking-room of the hotel—yes,” he said, while his own heart grew more troubled.

This distress of hers was disturbing. Temperley had assured Inspector James that she had not seemed very upset. Would he be able to repeat that assurance now? And why should her dismay be so acute unless it arose from some definite knowledge of the tragedy from which she had fled?

“It was in the crack between the leather of your chair,” he went on, watching her unhappily. “You remember,” he prompted, as she made no response. “The chair by the fire.”

“Yes, I remember,” she murmured, with a little shudder. Then suddenly shot another question at him: “How do you know my name?”

“How do I know your address?” he responded. “The answer is the same. A visiting card.”

Her eyes were wide now. “Do you mean—”

“It was in your purse.” He could see that she had forgotten about the visiting card. “With the key, and one or two other things. But don't be too worried.
I
found the purse. The inspector didn't—”

“
Inspector?
”

She was on her feet in a flash, and this time her agitation was healing balm. She knew nothing about the inspector! In that case, she must know nothing about the murder! Yes, but, in that case, why on earth…

“Do you mean—something's
happened
?” Her question came faintly.

“Yes—something rather bad has happened,” replied Temperley, “and that's why I thought you might like me to return your bag to you, instead of somebody else.”

A look of gratitude was nipped in the bud by another of swift concern.

“But—it's nothing to do—” she began quickly, and then paused. Controlling herself, she inquired, more quietly, “Please tell me what
has
happened?”

“On one condition.”

“What?”

“That you sit down again.”

She obeyed, with a faint, weary smile.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, tell me, you don't
know
what's happened?”

“If I did, would I ask?” she retorted.

“But you left the room hurriedly.”

“I see, you've a good memory.”

“Which is trying to serve you, Miss Wynne. May I know why you left so hurriedly?”

“And may I know if this is a cross-examination?” She was fighting hard. Unreasonably, he thought. But the next moment she crumpled, and gasped, “Are
you
a detective?”

“Good Lord, no!” exclaimed Temperley. “I've no more to do with all this than I expect
you
have!” He conceded that in the hope of winning her confidence. “My name is Richard Temperley, and I'm just a man who is returning a lady her bag.”

“And, at the same time, cross-examining the lady—”

“To prevent her from being cross-examined later on, perhaps, by somebody else.”

“I see,” she murmured, after a little pause. “The—inspector you mentioned?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“Does that mean, you
think
so?”

“He wants to find you.”

There was another pause. Odd, how they were moving all round the tragedy without actually touching it! Temperley found himself struggling to retain his belief in the girl's professed ignorance.

“You could have told the inspector where I was to be found,” said Miss Wynne, raising her eyes from the foot of the easel at which she had been staring.

“Yes, I could.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Hardly know.”

“Was it so—important?”

“Inspector James seemed to think it was.”

“But still you kept back my name and address?”

“Yes. And if you ask me why again, I can only tell you again that I don't know.”

“Sporting instinct, perhaps?” she suggested.

“If you like,” he responded, with a smile.

They were getting on much better now. For an instant, as she returned his smile, he forgot everything else, and had no quarrel with the world. The miracle of companionship is the only answer to the insistence of tragedy. But he was pulled back to tragedy at her next abrupt question.

“And, now—what
did
happen?” she asked.

“After you left?”

Confound it! Even after that friendly exchange of smiles, he was fencing again!

“Of course, after I left!”

“I hope you're ready to hear something pretty bad, Miss Wynne?”

“Quite ready.”

“Well, then, here it is. Somebody was murdered.”

She sat very still. To his infinite regret, he found that, at this poignant instant, he could learn nothing from her. Whatever she was feeling, she gave no sign.

“Why doesn't she even ask, ‘Who?''' he thought, fretfully. “If only she'd act as one would expect her to act!”

But, since she didn't, he proceeded,

“You remember that man who entered the smoking-room a minute or two after you did? Elderly fellow. He was on the train, you know. I suppose you saw him come in?”

“Yes.” Her voice was very low.

“Well—he took an arm-chair near the window.”

“Yes.”

“And—er—shortly after that,
you
left, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Just as I was going in. Do you remember passing me?”

“Yes.”

Four yes's! And not an inflection in any of them. Temperley began to grow desperate. She wasn't giving him any help at all!

On the point of saying, “I thought you seemed worried,” he desisted. That could come later. Better stick to the facts for the moment, and get them over.

“Well, when I entered the room the man was tucked away in his chair. I thought he was asleep.
I
took the chair by the fire—the one you'd just left, you know—and where I found your bag later on. Expect I dozed a bit myself. But all at once I opened my eyes, and I found that the old fellow was dead.”

The silence that followed was the longest that had passed between them. The girl was absorbing the information she had just received. Temperley was waiting for her comment. He was determined, this time, that he would not break the silence.

At last she broke it with a question.

“How did you know he was dead?”

“Yes, the inspector asked me that,” he answered. “He wasn't snoring.”

He paused, to make her speak again.

“Why should he have been snoring?”

“He shouldn't have been. Nobody should. But I'd travelled from Preston with him, you see, and knew him to be a defaulter! So, when I found he wasn't snoring—” He shrugged his shoulders, and frowned. “I agree it wasn't conclusive evidence. But—dash it, I don't know! There seemed to be—something in the air.”

She looked at him quickly.

“Did
you
notice it?” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Was
that
why you looked so worried when you left the room?”

“Worried?” she repeated.

“I thought you seemed so.” There—it was out now!

She hesitated, then offered an exclamation that seemed, to Temperley, thinner than Indian paper.

“Didn't he worry
you
in the train when he snored?” she asked.

Temperley's soul groaned. What—hurry from the room just because…? And yet, after all, snoring can be the very devil! The poor fellow's noise had nearly sent Temperley potty, and after an all-night journey this girl's nerves might have been frayed, too, so that she found the snoring beyond her capacity to stand…Snoring!…
Snoring!