Duplicate Death Read online

  ‘You left it on the shelf in the cloakroom, where no one, not even Mrs Haddington, happened to catch sight of it.’

  ‘So likely that anyone would admit to having seen it! And if Mrs Haddington didn’t, it must have been the only thing that did escape her eye in the house! She saw that one of the unfortunate servants had put out the wrong kind of towel in the cloakroom fast enough!’

  ‘Oh, she saw that, did she? Careful housewife?’

  ‘Extremely so! Capable of drawing her finger along the tops of things to be sure there’s no dust there!’ said Beulah, with a short laugh. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘Not at present. You go home, Miss Birtley, and think things over a bit! Then perhaps we’ll get on much better when next we meet.’

  Inspector Grant rose quietly, and opened the door. Beulah hesitated, looking from him to Hemingway, and then went quickly from the room.

  The Inspector closed the door with deliberation. His chief, regarding him with the eye of experience, said: ‘All right, I can see you’re bursting with something! Let’s have it!’

  ‘A verra dour witness,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Well, if that’s all – !’

  The Inspector’s slow, shy smile lit his eyes. ‘Och, I saw nothing you did not see yourself ! You will not thank me for pointing out to you that Mrs Haddington stated that she had not entered the cloakroom; nor that she has it in her, that lassie, to murder a man.’

  ‘She’s got it in her all right, but I’m damned if I see the motive. Look up her case, will you, Sandy?’

  ‘I will, of course. It’s verra interesting: no one had a motive.’

  ‘Someone had. Our trouble is that we don’t know the first thing about any of them – barring that girl. All we’ve got is a bunch of classy people, all moving in the best circles, all to be handled carefully, and only one of them known to the police.’ He scratched his chin meditatively. ‘You can just see a chap like Mr Godfrey Poulton putting up a beef to the Assistant Commissioner about the rude way he’s been handled, can’t you? And they’ve all of them got such nice manners they won’t talk about each other! To think I should ever be glad to run up against Terrible Timothy in a case! It all goes to show, doesn’t it?’

  ‘That would be Mr Harte?’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘I do not think he would strangle a man.’

  ‘I’m dead sure he wouldn’t – at least, I would have been before the War, but now I come to think of it he’s just the sort of young devil to have got himself into a Commando, and the parlour-tricks they taught those lads were enough to make your hair stand on end! All the same, Terrible Timothy isn’t even an Also Ran in my humble opinion. Which is why, Sandy, I am going to call on him in these chambers of his, and get him to give me the low-down on these people! He was very keen on helping me when he was fourteen: well, now he can help me!’ He rose, and added: ‘And what his father and mother would say, if they knew of the highly undesirable bit of goods he’s got his eye on, is nobody’s business!’ He shut his notebook, and restored it to his pocket. ‘We’ll go and see what the backroom boys have discovered in the way of finger-prints. It won’t help us, but we may as well go by the book. After that, we’ll give Mr Seaton-Carew’s flat the once-over, and see what we can get out of that. No use my hauling some housemaid out of bed to get the story of the wrong towel out of her: that’ll keep.’

  ‘What, Chief Inspector, did you make of Mrs Haddington?’

  ‘I’m no judge of snakes, but she seemed to me a good specimen! I didn’t like her, I didn’t like her story, and I don’t like her any the better for the latest disclosure. Come on!’

  The finger-print experts had only one thing to show the Chief Inspector that interested him. As he had supposed, no prints could be obtained from the wire twisted round Seaton-Carew’s neck; the prints on various objects in the room included only those which would naturally be found there. The telephone-receiver showed several rather blurred prints, a clear impression of Miss Birtley’s fingers, and not a trace of the murdered man’s.

  ‘Which is a very significant circumstance,’ said Hemingway. ‘It’s no use asking me why it’s important, because so far I don’t know. I know it is, because I’ve got flair. That’s French, and it’s what made me a Chief Inspector, whatever anyone may tell you.’

  ‘It means,’ said Inspector Grant, ‘that the murdered man never touched the receiver.’

  ‘How long did it take you to work that one out?’ demanded Hemingway offensively.

  The Inspector continued, unmoved: ‘And it means that either the instrument was knocked from the table in a struggle, or that someone lifted it, and dropped it. For why?’

  ‘You can rule out the struggle: there wasn’t one. If that

  had been how that receiver came to be hanging down to the floor, the whole table would have been kicked over, and it wasn’t. It looks as if someone deliberately lifted it off the table, and let it hang.’ He laid down the photograph he had been studying. ‘Why? Fair-sized chap, Seaton-Carew, wasn’t he? Whoever planned to do him in wanted to be sure of getting him in what you might call a convenient position. If you were called away in the middle of a game of Bridge to take a telephone-call, what would you do?’

  ‘I do not play Bridge.’

  ‘Well, shinty, or whatever your unnatural game is called! You’d pick up the receiver, standing! You might even be facing quite the wrong way for the assassin. But if you found the receiver hanging down beside the table, the way it was, what would be the easiest way for you to pick it up? To sit down in the chair, placed so handy, of course! That would bring your neck well within the reach of a shorter person. And don’t tell me that every one of the suspected persons, barring Terrible Timothy, was shorter than Seaton-Carew, because I’ve seen that for myself ! I told you this wasn’t going to do us any good. What’s the time? Seven o’clock? Let’s make a night of it, and have some breakfast! After that, we’ll go round to this Jermyn Street address, and startle Mr Seaton-Carew’s man.’

  Before they set forth on this mission, the Inspector was obliged to present his disgusted chief with the infor mation that the call from Doncaster had come from a public call-box.

  ‘Which isn’t at all the sort of thing I want to be told at this hour of the morning,’ remarked Hemingway, pouring himself out another cup of very strong tea. ‘Not that I’m surprised. The only thing that would surprise me about this case would be if I was to get a real lead.’

  ‘Whisht now, it is early yet!’ said the Inspector soothingly.

  ‘It isn’t too early for me to recognise a thick fog when I see one!’ retorted Hemingway. ‘To think I told Bob I was glad it wasn’t another Pole getting funny with a knife! Now, that was easy!’

  ‘Ay,’ agreed Grant. ‘There were so many motives you said there was no seeing the wood for the trees, I mind well. And three of the suspects with records as long as from here to the Border. Ah, well!’

  ‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Hemingway, ‘but whenever I get an assistant detailed to me he can’t ever find anything better to do than to remember a lot of things I’ve said which it would do him more good to forget. I had a young fellow once with just that same habit, before the War it was, and do you know what happened to him? He had to leave the Force!’

  ‘If it’s Wake you’re meaning,’ said Grant patiently, ‘I know well he left the Force, for he married a widow with a snug business, and already they have three, or it may be four, bairns.’

  ‘Well, let that be a lesson to you!’ said Hemingway. ‘Stop trying to annoy me, and come to Jermyn Street!’

  The morning papers were on sale by this time; as the police-car paused, in a traffic hold-up, before a news agent’s shop, flaring headlines caught the Chief Inspector’s eye. One of the more popular journals sought to attract custom by the caption, written in arresting capitals: Murder at a BridgeParty! Inspector Grant slid quickly out of the car, procured a copy of this enter prising news-sheet, and jumped back into the