Duplicate Death Read online

  ‘Easily!’ responded Hemingway, in his friendliest tone. ‘And what was it you were telling Mrs Haddington about Lord Guisborough?’

  ‘Nothing against him!’ Miss Spennymoor assured him. ‘Only knowing Maisie like I did – that was his mother, you know, and if ever there was a Lad – ! I couldn’t hardly fail to know the ins and outs of it all. Because I was dresser to all the girls when she first took up with Hilary Guisborough, and I don’t know how it was, but I always had a fancy for Maisie, and she for me, and I often used to visit her.’

  ‘After he married her?’ suggested Hemingway.

  ‘Oh, and before he did! They used to live in a little flat, Pimlico way, because at that time he’d got some kind of a job. He lost it later, of course, but that was Hilary all over! Well, as the girls used to say, what could you expect of a man with a soppy name like that? Still, I never heard Maisie complain, never once, and, give him his due, he married her within a month of her twins being born, which made it all right, only naturally it isn’t a thing anyone would want talked about. Well, is it? Maisie used to feel it a lot, because, say what you like, legitimated isn’t the same as being born in wedlock, not however you look at it! Maisie used to say to me that if there was one thing she couldn’t bear it was having Hilary’s grand relations look down on her twins, which is why I’m sorry I ever mentioned the matter, because they none of them knew anything about Maisie, not till Hilary wrote and told his people he’d been married for years, and got a couple of kids. They behaved very properly, by all accounts, having Maisie and the twins down to stay, and all, but it was a great strain, and she told me wild horses wouldn’t drag her there again, and nor they ever did, because she died before they invited her again. Well, they always say there’s a silver lining to every cloud, don’t they? But I never ought to have mentioned it to anyone, and I hope you won’t repeat it, because it wouldn’t be a very nice thing for Lance, and him a lord, to have people saying he’d had to be legitimated!’

  This anecdote, though of human interest, was not felt to have contributed anything of marked value to the problem confronting the Chief Inspector. ‘Though, mind you, Sandy,’ he said, as, having parted from Miss Spennymoor, he entered the boudoir, ‘I’ve always thought it was a bit unfair, the way they just stamp Legitimated on birth certificates. Doing a thing by halves, is what I call it. I daresay Lord Guisborough doesn’t like it much, but try as I will I can’t fancy that as a motive for murdering Mrs Haddington. What’s more, from what I saw of that sister of his, she’d fair revel in having been born on the wrong side of the blanket, and she seemed to me to be the master-mind of that little party.’ He glanced round the walls of the boudoir, which were hung with a few dubious water-colours, mounted and framed in gilt. None of them was of sufficient size or weight to have made it necessary to hang them on hooks from the picture-rail. Hemingway pulled on a pair of wash-leather gloves, and began to make a systematic tour, lifting each picture away from, the wall, and peering to see how it was hung. At the third masterpiece – The Isles of the West, from which Inspector Grant had averted his revolted gaze – he paused. He cast one triumphant glance at his assistant, and lifted the picture down, and held it with its back to the assembled company. A piece of string had been knotted to the rings screwed into it: virgin string, as everyone saw at a glance, with not a speck of dust upon it.

  ‘A Chruitheir! ‘ uttered Grant, under his breath.

  ‘Very likely!’ said Hemingway. ‘You can get busy on this one, Tom!’ He bent to examine the string, and suddenly raised his head. ‘String!’ He turned, and jabbed a finger at the desk. ‘Top right-hand drawer, Sandy! Also a pair of large scissors in a leather holder!’

  ‘I remember.’ The Inspector pulled open the drawer, handed the ball of string to his superior, and, more circumspectly, using his handkerchief, picked up the scissors, in their case, and stood waiting for Sergeant Bromley to take them from him.

  ‘Same string – and that means nothing!’ said Hemingway, comparing the ball with the string attached to the picture. ‘Ordinary string, used for tying up parcels.’ He drew forth a length of tarnished picture-wire from his pocket, uncoiled it, slid the ends through the rings on the back of the frame, lightly twisted them where the strands were already a little unravelled, and observed the result with a critical eye. ‘As near the same length as the string as makes no odds!’ he remarked. ‘That seems to settle that! Got anything, Tom?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t tell you yet if the prints are the same as any we took on Tuesday, sir. I’ll have to take ‘em back to the Department.’

  Hemingway nodded. ‘Do that now. Rush it!’ He rehung the picture on the wall, and turned, holding out a gloved hand for the scissors. Inspector Grant gave them to him, and he drew them gently out of their coloured leather sheath. ‘Of course, you can’t say with any certainty how a pair of large scissors comes by its scratches,’ he remarked. He handed the scissors to Bromley. ‘Go over them carefully, Tom!’

  ‘I will, of course, sir,’ said the Sergeant, receiving them tenderly. ‘But if you can see your way through this case – well!’

  The Chief Inspector, his gaze travelling slowly round the room, vouchsafed no response to this. His mind was plainly elsewhere; and it was not until a few moments after the Finger-print unit had departed that Grant ventured to address him.

  ‘If the murder was committed with the wire from that picture, it was not Poulton that did it!’ he said.

  Hemingway’s eyes came to rest on his face. ‘Oh, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Och, would he take down the picture and remove the wire from it under the poor lady’s very eyes?’ demanded the Inspector.

  ‘Certainly not. What makes you so sure she was in this room with him the whole time he was here?’

  The Inspector stared at him. ‘But – !’ He was silent, suddenly, frowning over it.

  ‘Going a bit too fast, Sandy. All we know is what Thrimby and Poulton himself told us. According to Thrimby, he arrived here at about 6.25; according to both of them, he left at a quarter-to-seven. That gave him twenty minutes, during which time only he and Mrs Haddington knew what happened. We have only his word for it they were together in the boudoir throughout. I admit, it doesn’t seem likely she’d have left the room, but she might have: we don’t know.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Inspector slowly, ‘supposing she left him to fetch something – it would not have given him much time, would it?’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t, and one would say he’d have wanted a bit of time to find that string – if it was that string and those scissors which were used! I don’t say I think it was Poulton, but I do say it’s still a possibility, and one we won’t lose sight of. Setting him aside for the moment, who are we left with? I don’t think it was Miss Birtley: I’ve considered her case carefully, and I don’t see how she could have got to Earl’s Court and back in the time. There’s young Butterwick, who dashed out of the house, leaving his stick behind him; and there’s Lord Guisborough, who also went off in a rage, slamming the door behind him. Neither was actually seen to leave the premises; either, I suppose, could have concealed himself somewhere – in the cloakroom, say – until the coast was clear, and then slipped up to this room, and waited for Mrs Haddington to come in. Look at those windows! They’re both in slight embrasures, and you see how the thick curtains would shut off the whole embrasure. Plenty of room for a man to stand behind them, and I’ll bet they were drawn by tea-time. Now tell me what possible reason either of those two can have for murdering Mrs Haddington, and we shall both be happy! And don’t say Guisborough did it because she flung his birth in his teeth, and he was touchy, because I don’t like tall stories, and never did!’

  ‘It could not have been the doctor?’ Inspector Grant said doubtfully.

  ‘You’ve got him on the brain!’

  ‘It’s the way he keeps on turning up!’ apologised Grant.

  ‘If you mean he was here in the middle of the day, there’s no di