The Woman in the Wardrobe Page 6

  “There have been one or two men,” he was saying, “I have met in my lifetime whom I felt I should never understand. No—not even if I devoted many years to it. One was a Sicilian who worked in the garden of my villa outside Naples. It was many years ago. I had unearthed and set up a most delicate little statue—a Priapus in clay. He was really delightful: a fat, laughing, rollicking little handful of terracotta. It made you happy just to gaze at him. Now my gardener hated that statue. Hated it, I firmly believe, for the joy in its grin, and the wrinkles round its little hands and feet. One morning he waited till he thought I was out; then he took his spade and smashed it. Just smashed it! And then buried the pieces among the laurel bushes… I shall never forget that: it made me very frightened.”

  No one said anything. Mr Verity passed round the wine and the statues flared in the yellow light.

  “That Sicilian gardener was a terrible man. I know that. A warped and envious soul. The frankness and pride of that tiny God of Procreation filled him with anger. He could not face its demon and lascivious mouth! Or perhaps it was the artistry—the delight of a golden land in a golden age—that caused him to feel the dross within himself. Whatever it was I shall never know, but as I watched him, stooping slightly because of his club foot, he shattered it with his spade and shovelled its baby, red limbs into the bushes. His face, when he turned to go home, was darker than the cypress-trees in the garden.”

  Jackson shifted in his chair.

  “Maxwell is another such. I do not understand him, and I am afraid of him. I am very glad I never met him. In his desk was a great sheaf of papers—mainly letters to and from victims. And accounts. Somewhere at his house—in a safe, I imagine—there must be hundreds of ‘bits of evidence’. All letters were the same letter: men and women terrified the rest of their lives for one indiscretion—often, as in the case of Cunningham, for something comparatively innocent; or even, as with Paxton, for a positive kindness. As I turned them over I had the sense again of joy crushed out, of light extinguished; only not with a spade—not so suddenly, or so angrily. No: carefully pressed out over the months, not even for the pleasure of pressing. And, because Maxwell was a far more evil man than my gardener, there was destruction, but no death: poison took its place. The delicate fragments of pagan jubilation lay under my laurel bushes: nothing remained. But the faces of these victims are still here, down there at ‘The Charter’, hatched and notched, and splintered by the bitterness of unending years. And now we four must make our reports, and use our brains, and catch his murderer.”

  “I know you,” said Rambler slowly, fingering his jowl. “You’ve spoken to me this way before. Twice, to be exact.”

  “And did I catch the murderer?”

  “Yes. Almost immediately afterwards.”

  Jackson started.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Inspector.” Verity laughed, passing round the wine again. “We’re a long way off that yet. And I have no right to be indulging in the luxury of a suspended judgment when there’s still work to be done.”

  “Very well,” said Rambler. “Let’s get down to it.”

  “You heard the main details over supper,” said Verity, lighting a cigar. “Pelham, have you anything more to add?”

  “Yes.” The doctor’s bird-like face looked out suddenly from the hinterland of shadow. “Examination shows that of the two bullets found in the deceased, both fired from a .45 revolver, one penetrated the left ventricle of the heart to cause death. It must have been instantaneous. He had also quite a nasty bruise on his face too—something he struck when he fell, I hazard.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Rambler. “I’m afraid as evidence it spoils any theories we might have dreamed up that Maxwell did the locking himself—even if we could think of a reason why he should want to do such a thing.”

  “I’m afraid it does. I am sure he died instantaneously.”

  “Yes.” He turned to Jackson. “Let me run over your list of suspects again. There are Messrs Paxton and Cunningham, Miss Burton, and Miss What’s-her-name?”

  “Framer, sir. Yes, and someone called Winnidge, apparently a friend of Miss Burton.”

  “A local man?”

  “I should say so, sir.”

  “Good. Now, Verity’s told me most of what has happened to date. I think if he now went over it, it might simplify matters.”

  “Excellent proposal!” Verity’s eyes gleamed with anticipation: the horror of the Sicilian gardener was evidently banished from his mind. “It’s all quite simple really: but quite insoluble at the moment. Mr Paxton enters the bedroom by the window and leaves by the door. Mr Cunningham enters by the door and leaves by the window. Yet both door and window are locked. The key of the door is found inside on the floor.”

  “Obviously this is dependent on one or other of them having a pass-key,” said Rambler. “If Paxton had it, he could have locked the window when he came in, and the door on the outside when he left.”

  “Exactly,” said Verity admiringly. “Exactly so.”

  “If Cunningham had it, he could have used it for entering by the door, and locking it when he left, leaving by the window next door. You say yourself the constable is undecided which window he left from.”

  “Right again.”

  “Incidentally, it’s very interesting that the man cannot be sure.”

  “That’s the Amnestie police,” said Jackson carefully.

  “Yes, of course. I heard from Verity that the Carrington men are a very different bunch. By the way, does Paxton admit to locking the window?”

  “No, he does not.”

  “And does Cunningham admit to leaving by Paxton’s window?”

  “No, he does not.”

  “Then the one who is lying is pretty wide-awake.”

  “That’s the trouble,” said Verity slowly. “I’m not so sure either is telling lies.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You see, I happen to know that Cunningham was searched by the constable who caught him at the bottom of the drain-pipe. And I happened to see that Paxton was searched in the vestibule when I relieved him of his unfired gun. And neither of them had the key on them.”

  “Paxton could have got rid of it before shouting for help.”

  Verity shook his head.

  “I taxed him with that when he was in a complete state of nerves after finding the body. He denied it vehemently: and I am rather inclined to give credence to denials made under those circumstances. Besides, he has been under constant surveillance since he reported the murder. If he had concealed it, he could never have reclaimed it.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Cunningham claims that it was planted on him by Paxton. That was impossible. But that it was planted by someone, I’m prepared to believe.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “What about Miss Framer, the Manageress?” put in the doctor. “She’s the person most likely to have it, and I think you said she was involved somehow.”

  “Good for you, Doctor,” Verity shouted. “Have some more wine!… Yes, I believe she is involved. There was that talk about she and Paxton whispering together. And then there’s a Memo to see a ‘Miss F.’ here, among Maxwell’s papers. And I recall that she most emphatically described the meeting between Paxton and Maxwell as ‘cordial’, which it could not possibly have been. The planting of the key on Cunningham, taken together with the deliberate lie, seems to lead to one clear conclusion.”

  “Which is?”

  “That she is covering up for Paxton.”

  “But why?”

  “How am I to know? Unless—”

  “Unless?”

  The phone rang. It was for Jackson.

  “Yes, Matthews?”

  There was a pause. Then:

  “Are you sure?… I see.”

  Verity called from the table: “Ask him if anyone can remember if Miss Framer went into the dining-room this morning, when Paxton and Cunningham were there!”

  Jackson asked the question
. There was a pause, then the Inspector was heard saying:

  “Good… good! Let me know when you’ve got anything else.”

  He rang off and returned to the table.

  “Yes, Locksley says Miss Framer went into the dining-room to put some cutlery on the sideboard. He doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to what she did exactly.”

  “When was this?”

  “When we were seeing Paxton in the lounge.”

  “Excellent! She had ample opportunity to do her planting.”

  “Yes,” said Jackson. “And the evidence I’ve just received seems to back up your theory.”

  “What was that?”

  “There were nobody else’s prints on the pass-key. Only Miss Framer’s.”

  “Are they sure?”

  “They’re certain.”

  “Wonderful! Anything else?”

  “Yes, they’re working on the revolver now. Oh, and the constable who caught Cunningham definitely identifies the window as Maxwell’s.”

  “What makes him so certain?” asked Verity, smiling slightly, and taking a fistful of raisins from the table. “Anyway, I’m not sure it matters much now. There was no need for Cunningham to lie in his statement to us. We know now he didn’t have a pass-key with him—so he could gain no advantage from saying he left by Paxton’s window.”

  “True,” said Rambler again. “It’s all very interesting.”

  “Isn’t it though, Porpoise?” said Verity excitedly. “Here you have a mystery of the century! Listen. A murder is committed in a room. Two men are immediate suspects. Suspect A enters by the window and leaves by the door. Suspect B enters by the door and leaves by the window. Suspect A can lock the window but not the door. Suspect B can lock the door but not the window. Neither can lock both—yet both are locked: and from the inside. And all the while a body, which medical evidence proves could not have done the locking itself before it expired, leaks blood over the carpet of an empty room.”

  “Empty except for the girl,” said the doctor.

  “Except for the girl. And she was in a faint.”

  “Says she was,” said the doctor. “There’s no way of telling!”

  “This is Miss Burton?” asked Rambler.

  “Yes. She complicates matters beautifully.”

  “You mean she makes them easier, Doctor,” said Rambler. “Because she does, you know. The problem of who locked the door and the window would be quite insoluble without her. But now there’s something to get one’s teeth into—even if it’s only a fantastic story of a man in a mask.”

  “I should say because of the fantastic story,” retorted the doctor, not to be outdone. “I see there are times when obvious untruth is the policeman’s salvation.”

  “Certainly,” agreed Verity, “if it is untruth.”

  “Surely you don’t believe that story she told?”

  “We can’t afford to doubt it,” the old man replied. “We can’t afford to doubt anything. Here—I’m neglecting my duty! Have a cigar, won’t you?”

  He passed round the box. Four flames leapt in the dark.

  “Let’s look at this thing logically,” said Rambler, puffing out. “If we can’t afford to exclude Miss Burton’s story, we certainly can’t afford to exclude Miss Burton herself. She fits in here somewhere.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jackson. “As you say, she’s part of the only possible solution to this mystery of the locked room.”

  “Exactly. Even granting that Paxton and Cunningham did the murder, neither could have done it without help. Which leads us directly to Miss Burton. This girl was obviously either an accomplice or she did it alone. Personally I think she was an accomplice.”

  “Why?” asked the doctor.

  “Well, from what you say, she does not seem the sort of girl to kill a man and then tie herself up in his cupboard. Of course, that is only a supposition. We’ll consider that possibility later. First let’s take the first of my alternatives—that she was an accomplice. If so, who was her partner? Paxton? I hardly think so. I cannot imagine why he should call the police so immediately. In doing so, he cancelled out any object he may have had in getting his accomplice to lock the door behind him.”

  “Good,” said Verity, from the other end.

  “That leaves us with Cunningham as accomplice. Now, this is more likely. He has to use Miss Burton to gain admittance to the room in the first place. The waitress to whom, on her own confession, Maxwell always gave his orders, could rely on having the door unlocked for her.”

  “Yes!” Dr Pelham nodded vigorously.

  “Now imagine what follows. Supposing she goes into the room at approximately 7.35. Cunningham joins her at about 7.40. He shoots his victim dead after a struggle, and is about to leave when he sees Paxton out on the balcony, preparing to come in through the window. They both hide—one behind the cupboard; the other perhaps behind the bed. Paxton comes in, takes a swift look at Maxwell, realises he is dead, and rushes off to call the police. Obviously they have to work quickly. They daren’t be seen coming out of Maxwell’s room! So he locks the door with the ordinary key which, I imagine, Maxwell always kept on the inside, then throws it down on the floor, where you found it. He then goes to the window, and climbs out—telling Miss Burton to follow him as soon as he is down safely. Down he goes: and falls neatly into the arms of a policeman. Petrified, Miss Burton sees this from the bedroom. What is she to do? She can’t leave by the door. You, Verity, were probably outside it with Paxton——”

  “Who was making the dickens of a noise on it.”

  “Precisely. And she can’t leave by the window because of the policeman. And then she hits on a brilliant idea—an idea born of absolute panic: the story of the masked man. In an unreasoning flap she locks the window, gets into the cupboard, ties herself up roughly with a bit of cord and, having first taken the precaution of putting the key on the inside in case she may need it, slams the door on herself. It has, I think you said, an automatic lock.”

  Verity’s blue eyes glittered with pleasure.

  “Bravo!” he said. “Brilliant!”

  The doctor murmured approval sotto voce, and even Jackson was impressed.

  Verity stood up and opened a door at his end of the room. A breeze came in from the garden, blowing out the rest of the candles. Only the outlines of statues were visible in the glow of the cigars. The doctor joined him.

  “It’s funny,” Pelham said, looking down the hill towards the dark sea. “As human beings you are all of you conscious of your faults, your liability to error. But as detectives you become incapable, somehow, of seeing other people as men and women very like yourselves. You deal with the facts before you as if they were the faint clues of a perfect crime, the tiny, inerasable vestiges of a plan which has worked superbly. Yet once you see them for what they really are—pointers to the imperfections of a crime—everything becomes clarity itself.”

  “True, true, Doctor,” sighed Verity. “We are incurably stupid. Now that Rambler has so ably pointed it out, the Man-in-the-Mask story appears as exactly what it is: the fabrication of a minute. Looked at sympathetically, the facts before us yield something not so very diabolically clever, after all: merely a girl, confused by the work of a moment, not knowing which way to turn to save herself and her accomplice, locking windows which should be left open, leaving guns lying which should be removed. It’s a pathetic picture of ineptitude, really. And afterwards—think of afterwards: the girl lying trembling in the blackness of the wardrobe, dreaming up details for her impossible bandit with the mask over his face! And all the time, by her one oversight of locking the window, she had destroyed any chance she had of convincing us of his existence!”

  “It will be necessary,” said Jackson, “to establish some sort of liaison between Cunningham and the girl. At present we haven’t even any proof that they know each other.”

  “You may depend on it,” said Rambler grimly. “They know each other!”

  From the dark hall the teleph
one rang. Jackson rose and groped his way to answer it. There was a pause: he grunted, then replaced the receiver.

  “They’ve examined Cunningham’s gun,” he said. He turned to Rambler. “That’s the one we found in the room, sir.”

  “Well? They found Cunningham’s prints, of course?”

  “Yes. And Miss Burton’s too.”

  Verity stepped back into the darkened room and grasped Rambler warmly by the arm.

  “Did you hear that, Porpoise?” he said admiringly. “And Miss Burton’s too!”

  “And Mr Paxton’s as well, I’m afraid,” said Inspector Jackson.

  Chapter VI

  “It’s only natural that things should be as complicated as this,” Verity was saying. It was the following morning, and he and Rambler were descending the hill to the town. “After all, the whole atmosphere is as difficult as it could be.”

  “It certainly is,” said Rambler, looking out to sea. “What are the chances of a little bathing sometime today? Don’t forget I’m still on my holiday.”

  “All right,” said Verity. “But I regret I have only one costume. I’ll bathe first, while you’re seeing Jackson. Then you can go. Ah!… Look over there! That white building at the end of the road nearest to us!”

  “‘The Charter’?”

  “Yes, ‘The Charter’ of Amnestie: a small, undistinguished English hotel. Why should anyone want to come down here? Yet Maxwell chose it. I wonder why?… Because Miss Burton was here—”

  “Or Miss Framer was here—”

  “Or both.”

  “And Paxton chose it.”

  “Probably because Maxwell was here.”

  “And Cunningham, for the same reason. Maxwell probably wrote them pleasant letters from here.”

  “And then there’s this man Winnidge. Does anyone know who he is?”

  “He’s a local. We’ll know by tonight.”

  “Good.”

  “And there’s somebody else you can’t afford to miss.”