The Woman in the Wardrobe Read online

  “Nothing. Just a quotation. Go on please.”

  “Then he laughed, and told me to steal it—as I’d done before; that if I didn’t pay him what he wanted, he’d tell the police about that too. Then I went wild. Suddenly the realisation came to me of exactly what he’d done to me… how this one man had deliberately ruined my life.” He paused, then went on in a rush: “You don’t know what that stuff can do to you… You can’t know—but he did. He knew. He knew that I’d do anything to get it—I think he enjoyed that part best of all!… I admit I took dope before I met him, but I was none the worse for that. Not really… But afterwards it was different. There was no escape from him. He made me a liar, a thief and a swindler. He made my life a nightmare—and there was never anywhere I could turn. You see, I had no friends: like him, I had no friends.”

  “What did you do in that room?” asked Rambler firmly.

  “We fought. I killed him.”

  “How?”

  “I shot him as we struggled. In the back. I couldn’t believe I’d really done it. I held him up in my arms: he was heavy and didn’t move. I had some idea I should take him off the floor—perhaps put him in a chair. But he seemed to flop down all the time—he flopped all round the room. It was almost like the struggle again. His blood started staining the walls when I propped him up against them… Have you ever tried to hold a dead body upright? It’s difficult.”

  “You did all this in front of the girl?”

  “I don’t know how much she saw. I was so wild I didn’t care at the time. Afterwards, when I cooled down a bit, I found she’d fainted. I realised that she’d probably seen everything.”

  “And you had to make a get-away?”

  “That’s why I put her in the cupboard. I found some cord and tied up her hands and feet, but not too tightly. Then I shut the door on her.”

  “What did you do with the key?”

  “I put it in beside her. I didn’t want any more trouble—and there was just a chance neither she nor Maxwell would be missed, for some time.”

  “And then you left?”

  “No, not just then. I saw a man on the balcony outside. It was Paxton, and he was preparing to climb into the room. What could I do?… I was so frightened… I hid.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind the bed. I waited while he came in. I heard him gasp when he saw the body. Then he came over and messed around for a bit on the floor. Finally he bolted out of the room and down the stairs, calling like the devil for the police.”

  “Did he touch the gun on the floor?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

  “What happened then? You left by the window?”

  “Yes, I knew the door wasn’t safe.”

  “Did you lock the ordinary door?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But you left the gun,” said Rambler.

  “Yes, I’d forgotten all about it by that time. I climbed out of the window as fast as I could. There was blood all over my fingers and on my coat. I remember that I put streaks of it on the window as I went: it was horrible.”

  “It was brilliant,” said Verity. “We thought it was Maxwell’s own traces.”

  “And then down the pipe into the arms of the constable?” asked Rambler, for neatness’ sake.

  “Yes. He saw the mask in my top-pocket, but he thought it was my pocket-handkerchief.”

  Verity laughed. “And that’s the story?”

  “Yes. And now do what you please. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  Jackson looked at Rambler. Rambler looked at Verity; Verity looked at Matthews and said, in his gentlest tone:

  “Take Mr Cunningham into the dining-room and give him some coffee, will you?”

  Cunningham got to his feet.

  “You’re a clever man, Mr Verity,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mr Verity. “I remember reflecting yesterday that you were a man whom one could easily bluff if need be. And need was.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am afraid I practised a deception on you a little earlier on this morning, Mr Cunningham. I trust you will forgive me when you view it in the light of its success. You see I told you I saw you enter Miss Burton’s room with the mask.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Chapter XI

  “And yet even this isn’t good enough,” said the old man, scattering pebbles into the garden pool. “Not even a signed confession can explain away that locked window.”

  “And that locked door,” said Jackson. “He still thinks he didn’t touch it.”

  “And all the London Press is waiting,” sighed Verity. “Poor Jackson! You have a murderer self-confessed—and the girl who alone could have helped him to do it, he says he trussed up with cord. I’m afraid everything still centres on the woman in the wardrobe.”

  Rambler spoke, sadly fingering his jowl.

  “If only he hadn’t mentioned her quarrelling with Maxwell on the Tuesday night, and if only she hadn’t denounced him as the man in the mask!… Then we could safely say he was shielding her: and from our standpoint, everything in the garden would be lovely!”

  “Everything in the garden is lovely!” said Verity, striding away through the long grass to the apple-tree. “There’s nothing for me quite so summery as the sight of ripening apples, swelling and reddening at the same time—like a regiment of colonels very slowly getting worked up about the national situation.”

  “It’s all such a mess,” said Rambler suddenly.

  Jackson looked startled. It was the first discouraged word he had heard him use. In the pool the absurd silver fish sank to the bottom, and the gleam departed from their scales.

  “An hour ago,” said Verity, “you were absolutely sure that Alice Burton and Ted Winnidge had done it between them:—only because you had forgotten that I had asked Sergeant Matthews to search her room earlier on. (I’m sorry, by the way, I didn’t jog your memory earlier, but I couldn’t resist a coup de théâtre.) Now—with the addition of that one more fact—you instantly believe that Cunningham did it.”

  “Two more facts,” said Rambler shortly. “He admits he did.”

  “Well, the answer seems to me to be obvious. The more facts you gather, the more of the truth you learn. There’s a metaphysic there somewhere.”

  “You mean we should all start hunting for more evidence?”

  “Yes, I mean just that, Porpoise. We want to do some more solid detecting.”

  “In what direction, may I ask?”

  “Ah, if we knew that there’d be no difficulty! But you’re right: as usual, it’s thought before action. Now consider, this is really very interesting.” He stretched himself at full length on the grass. “The facts we have already are not enough, but they’re the only things that can tell us where to look for more. It’s rather like playing a treasure-hunt in which one of the clues has a dual significance. Its first function is to lead you to the next clue in the normal way; but its second function only becomes clear when you’ve reached the penultimate stage: it is to lead you straight to the treasure. We have now reached that stage, and I’m afraid we’ll have to go back over the ground, looking for the clue.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Jackson blankly.

  “Mr Verity means,” explained Rambler, “that what we need is one clue that only now makes full sense.”

  “I see, sir,” said Jackson.

  “Or,” said Verity suddenly stiffening, “we want one clue that only now has ceased to make any sense at all.”

  He got up excitedly.

  “I’m sorry to put it so paradoxically,” he said to Jackson, who was looking mutinous, “but the fact is I couldn’t have expressed it more neatly.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Expressed what?” asked Rambler.

  “Something I’ve just remembered.”

  “And that is?”

  “I must hav
e time to think. And I must be alone to do it.”

  He moved quickly to the garden gate.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Into the sea. A bathe will probably help a great deal.”

  “But you haven’t a costume!”

  “I know. I left it behind deliberately. Yesterday the sea was too warm. Today it will be warmer still—much too hot for a bathing-costume. No one,” said Mr Verity triumphantly, “can say I don’t learn from experience.”

  The day wore on. Lunch was served and eaten. For Jackson the afternoon was occupied in getting down Cunningham’s statement and preparing a report. For Rambler it was spent in profound thought in the living-room at ‘Persepolis’, under the disdainful scrutiny of the statues.

  As for the other erstwhile suspects, Miss Framer sat talking earnestly with Mr Paxton under the shade of the apple-tree; and Alice Burton and Ted Winnidge walked the beach, hand-in-hand, and watched Mr Verity from afar with a sense of overwhelming awe. The formidable old man lay on his back, motionless upon the broad sea.

  When at length he rose from it—like some paunchy triton in whose beard the sea-drops sparkled—and made, naked and shaking, for the sand, his two observers retreated scandalised into the garden of ‘The Charter’. Here the old man soon joined them, re-dressed in flannels, but failed in his abstraction to see either them, or the older couple beneath the tree. He passed straight across the lawn, strode into the hotel, and disappeared up the stairs. He was there for over an hour. On descending he ordered Jackson to assemble everybody in the lounge for eight that evening.

  Returning across the grass, he was accosted by Mr Paxton.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but could you possibly tell me when I will be allowed to leave this hotel?” His eyes stared anxiously through the lenses of his thick-framed spectacles. “I have much to do now.”

  “I daresay you have,” said Verity coolly. “However, we must first determine whether you go to jail charged with murder, or merely with attempted murder.”

  “But—”

  “Subject yourself to the higher powers, my good sir.”

  He passed on, but was intercepted by Alice.

  “Mr Verity—”

  “Later.”

  “There’s something we must know.”

  “Tonight at eight.”

  He brushed by them to the beach and sat by himself on a sand-dune, at the distance of two hundred yards from the gate, looking out to sea. The smoke of his cigars curled endlessly into the empyrean.

  In the course of the afternoon the journalists of the day before returned, together with a protesting embassy from The Yardstick. But their attempts to see Verity were frustrated less by the police, who had strict instructions to admit no one to his presence, than by his own apparent cataleptic trance when they finally burst through the cordon of his guards and rushed along the beach to interview him. He seemed neither to hear nor to see them, and he moved at all only to knock the ash from his cigar. Miss Framer herself tried to bring him some tea and sandwiches, but was likewise dismissed.

  Towards evening a great hush fell on ‘The Charter’: in the silence and failing light, the lounge filled obediently with those of its inmates who were concerned. Alice and Ted sat on the settee, Paxton and the Manageress in adjoining armchairs. Cunningham, farther off, felt the pressure of social ostracism in the form of a high-backed chair; and behind him stood Constable Locksley and the constable who had first caught him at the bottom of the drain-pipe. Jackson himself sat at the large table which all along had served for his desk: it had been dragged a little from the centre of the room to leave a space between the Law and those now immediately subject to it.

  At the last moment Rambler came in and went straight to the far corner of the room, where he sat down in the deepest armchair and remained silent. Colonel Rainchart looked in, but was promptly asked to leave; in the end he did, but still declaring fractiously that it was the concern of every right-thinking man and woman.

  Eight o’clock struck. All buzz of conversation died away as Mr Verity was seen moving slowly across the garden towards them. He entered the room and stood for a moment in silence before the table, facing the assembled company. He looked very tired, and the lids hung heavily over his dulled eyes. At length he said:

  “As you know, Mr Cunningham has confessed to the murder of the late Mr Maxwell. Some of you may think this is sufficient reason for the police to pursue the case no further and, ordinarily, it probably would be. But in the present case this is not the whole story: you are about to hear the end of it now. I hope it will clear up in your minds some of the mysteries that this affair has created: it will certainly reveal another killer.”

  His hearers shifted nervously in their seats and waited.

  “Let me start the story from the beginning,” he said. “It all began when Miss Burton sought refuge from Mr Maxwell’s threats and embraces in the town of Amnestie. By doing so she started this whole complicated train of events. Believe me, the Woman in the Wardrobe has much to answer for. She came down here and took a job as a waitress at ‘The Charter’. She explained her move in a letter to Maxwell: she told him about her fiancé, and thereby involved him as well.”

  Winnidge made an attempt to protest, but Verity stopped him with a gesture.

  “I want no interruptions, please. Mr Maxwell followed her down here and stayed at the same hotel. On his reappearance Miss Burton’s noble resolve to have things out, and to tell him to do his worst, faltered. She tried to compromise; in fact she let things go on from day to day: and all the time she permitted herself to be pawed as she served him his kidneys, her young lover remaining in complete ignorance.”

  “Is this strictly necessary?” Winnidge shouted.

  “When I asked her why this was she told me she ‘wanted time to think’. What she wanted was time to think of a way out—but it took her four days to realise that there never was a way out with Maxwell. It took her one last quarrel with him to realise that she had no chance whatever of escaping from the net, except by cutting it. Then, by her own confession, she rushed off to Mr Winnidge and urged him to kill Maxwell.”

  “Now look here—”

  “She says she didn’t know what she was saying but, as I have observed before in another context, that rarely signifies that she did not mean it.”

  A murmur of alarm and protest passed round the room.

  “This is all just an attack on us!” Winnidge called above it.

  “There is much to attack,” said Verity equably. “However, let us leave this for the moment and see what else your girl did.”

  The group in the room murmured again. Winnidge swore and sprang forward; Verity shrugged and stayed fast. The young man was finally constrained to sit down by a policeman, and his arm was taken firmly by his fiancée, who looked horridly pale and muttered something imploringly in his ear.

  “Her coming down here,” Mr Verity resumed, “brought Maxwell after her: and his coming brought Mr Paxton on the Monday, and Mr Cunningham on the Tuesday. We found the draft letters which Maxwell wrote to these two close friends of his from here, and omitted to throw away. And finally there was Miss Framer. Perhaps I had better explain this a little.”

  Paxton stiffened in his chair and looked straight ahead. Miss Framer’s eyes were shut tight.

  “Several years ago now, Miss Framer allowed herself to be extricated from an embarrassing position by means of an illegal expedient, thought out for her by a legal mind. This expedient cost Mr Paxton his career because, unfortunately, his precautions were inadequate to prevent Mr Maxwell’s securing proof of the details. Blackmail inevitably ensued. After about ten years, unlike Mr Paxton, Miss Framer managed to free herself from it by disappearing: she went, of course, into this part of the world—where she successfully ran ‘The Charter’ for almost a year, and even managed to improve what is obscurely called its ‘tone’. It was her misfortune that Alice Burton also chose this particular hotel in which to hide. Or shall we say th
at it was her misfortune that Mr Winnidge had his home here? Anyway, Maxwell arrived and soon recognised the poor woman. As I see it, he reserved to himself the pleasure of dealing with this old victim after he had settled matters with the new. A note among his papers refers only very briefly to ‘Miss F’. Fortunately for her, he was too busy with Miss Burton to attack her before he died.”

  “No,” said Paxton quietly. “He did attack her. Through me. I was to start what he called ‘negotiations’.”

  “Of course! Hence the whispering so frequently described by Mr Cunningham. I was regarding these merely as attempts to calm her.”

  “She was in a terrible state,” said Paxton.

  He put out a hand and touched her arm.

  “Of course,” said Verity. “So by her coming down here, Miss Burton involved all these people within the area of a small hotel. Thus far the chronology of events is pretty clear.” He looked about him, but no one offered any contradiction.

  “From Friday to Tuesday Miss Burton vacillated and Miss Framer trembled for the renewal of Maxwell’s attack. On Monday Paxton arrived, doubtless saw Maxwell, and attempted to defy him: he was told that he must continue, and that his ex-client must resume payment.”

  Paxton sighed audibly.

  “On Tuesday the tension must have been noticeably increasing. Mr Paxton and Miss Framer are in desperation; Miss Burton is making a final appeal to Maxwell; Mr Cunningham arrives with a gun. Miss Framer sees it when it is inadvertently dropped in the vestibule, and tells Mr Paxton. What hope they must have felt in their hearts!… An hour afterwards Miss Burton, blazing with fury and hate, is on her way to see her lover. The preliminaries are over. And now what happens?”

  There was a pause while Mr Verity lit a cigar. A ray of the dying sun stained his face bronze.

  “This is where we went astray,” he said at last. “I admit it. But it was not our fault. All the facts we discovered pointed to one solution: that Alice Burton and Edward Winnidge murdered Maxwell between them. At one time we believed that Winnidge shot him in Amnestie Square by the side of his taxi, using a gun with a silencer. We believed that, realising the wound was not fatal, he carried his victim upstairs and shot him again. We further believed that he then searched the room for a letter he had earlier written to Maxwell which would have revealed to the investigating police a connection between the two men: and that, failing to find it, he went to Alice’s room and told her he had killed Maxwell—as she had ordered him to do—and then rehearsed her in a plan to put all the blame on to Mr Cunningham. The only way we could explain the mystery of the locked door and the locked window was by assuming a plan that had been bungled in its execution. You may think this seems absurd, but everything supported it:—the vicar’s story, the stain at the foot of the stairs, the prints on the gun, the fantastic story of the man in the mask, and the subsequent denunciation of Mr Cunningham as that man. In fact, if I hadn’t done something rather unorthodox, young man and young maid would both have had a very unpleasant time of it.”