A Case of Spirits (16 page)

Captain Nye slumped over the table in a dead faint.

‘The galvanometer reading is the same!’ said Jowett. ‘Look at the needle, Strathmore!’

But Strathmore, like the others, had eyes only for the apparition which was gliding clear of the curtain and into the library. Its face and hands were as pallid as the shroudlike garment which enveloped it, but Miss Crush’s perceptions had been sharpened by the
sal volatile.
‘I recognise it!’ she said. ‘Look at the nose and side-whiskers. It is the spirit of that poor man Cribb, passing through on its way to purgatory. The chair has taken him from us, as it did poor Peter.’

‘Not so, madam!’ said Jowett, in a dramatic intervention worthy to rank with anything Irving ever did on the boards of the Lyceum. ‘That will do, Sergeant.’

The figure halted.

‘Dear God!’ exclaimed Miss Crush. ‘It still obeys commands, poor, hapless thing. It has not yet freed itself from its mortal obligations.’

‘I’m afraid not, ma’am,’ said Cribb’s voice. ‘You can’t give up the Force as easy as that.’ He wiped some talcum powder away from his lips with the sleeve of his nightshirt. ‘I seem to have alarmed Captain Nye, sir.’

‘Not only Captain Nye,’ said Probert. ‘What the devil is this charade all about, Inspector?’

Jowett was quite unperturbed. ‘I shall tell you, Doctor. I arranged this as a demonstration. This evening you have seen what Peter Brand intended you to see on Saturday evening: the apparent manifestation of a spirit. After his death we discovered that he was wearing a full-length nightshirt like this one of Cribb’s under his outer clothes. In the pocket was a small bag of talcum powder for application to the face and hands, to give the ghostly pallor, you understand. It sounds like a parlour game, I admit, but in the uneven light of a fire and before sitters who have already witnessed other phenomena, it could, I believe, carry some conviction. Even Cribb’s unrehearsed performance tonight seems to have impressed some of you. Are you feeling better, Captain Nye?’

‘Perfectly well,’ retorted the Captain over the bottle of
sal
volatile. ‘
Haven’t had enough sleep lately.’

Alice was frowning at what Jowett had said. ‘But if Peter Brand had dressed up—or, rather, undressed—like this, and left the chair, we should have known as soon as he took his hands away from the brass handles and broke the electrical circuit.’

‘A valid observation, Miss Probert,’ said Jowett, obviously relishing his role as unraveller of the mystery. ‘Won’t you kindly come over here and examine the galvanometer?’

The invitation was to Alice, but she was joined there by everyone else.

‘Damn it, the confounded thing is still registering 196!’ said Probert. ‘There’s something amiss.’

‘There must be somebody else in the chair!’ said Alice. ‘An accomplice! That large policeman with the beard.’

‘No, Miss Probart. You are quite mistaken,’ said Jowett. ‘Come and see for yourself.’ He walked to the curtains and drew them emphatically apart.

There was nobody seated in the chair. Stretched between the handles was a white handkerchief.

‘What’s a blasted wipe doing there?’ demanded Probert.

‘Standing in for Sergeant Cribb, Doctor,’ said Jowett. ‘You wouldn’t think a pocket handkerchief could stretch that far until you held it by opposite corners and saw the length of it. It tucks in nicely where the handle is screwed to the wood.’

‘A handkerchief won’t conduct electricity,’ said Probert.

‘Ah, but a wet one will,’ said Jowett. ‘And this one’s nice and wet from mopping up the water I spilt when I knocked over the flowers. You did a good job there, Cribb, and very naturally as well.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cribb.

‘We take no credit for the idea,’ Jowett went on, having conceded Cribb as much gratification as was good for him. ‘That was Brand’s. And he was clever enough to knock the chrysanthemums over with an orange—unless somebody put out a hand in the dark to assist the operation, and I suppose we’ll never know that for certain. However, he got his handkerchief saturated in a perfectly accountable way, by very decently agreeing to wipe up the water himself. He then replaced it in his pocket and took his place in the chair.’

‘How would he remove the handkerchief from his pocket when he was holding the handles?’ asked Strathmore.

‘That is easier than it might appear. He could not take his hands off the handles without breaking the current, it is true, but that still permitted him a considerable amount of movement with the rest of his body. It would not be difficult to bring the right pocket into a position where the thumb of the right hand could hook out the handkerchief. So long as the palm of that hand remained firmly on the handle he could use the fingers to fasten the end of the handkerchief as you see it here. He then had only to pick up the loose end in his teeth and transfer it to the left hand, and secure it to the handle. The contact would thus be unbroken, and he could leave the chair by passing the upper half of his body under the handkerchief. Sergeant Cribb is not a contortionist, but he seems to have achieved this feat without trouble. Is that so, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The rest you have seen for yourselves,’ said Jowett, spreading out his hands.

Nye was frowning. ‘We’ve seen what the poor beggar planned to do, but you haven’t shown us how he was killed.’

‘That’s a different question, Captain, but you shall have the answer if you would oblige me by going downstairs to turn off the electricity again—for the last time, I do assure you. And Cribb, Constable Thackeray is waiting outside the door, I believe. Ask him to step inside, will you?’

‘Dressed like this, sir?’ said Cribb, frowning.

‘If you please. After that you may step behind the curtain and put on your normal clothes. I need Thackeray to take the part of the corpse. He is experienced in the role, you told me.’

‘That’s right, sir. He’s a natural in the part.’ Cribb paused, remembering something. ‘Might I make one small request, sir? I’d like to put my jacket and trousers on again first. I wouldn’t care for Thackeray to see me like this. Not good for discipline.’

‘Really?’ Jowett eyed the nightshirt speculatively. ‘I suppose not. Be quick then. We can’t keep everyone here till midnight, you know.’

‘I trust that it will not distress anybody if I ask the constable to adopt the position in which we found Mr Brand,’ Jowett resumed, after Thackeray had entered, wearing an eye-shade.

There was no dissent, although Captain Nye was staring fixedly at Thackeray, frowning and inclining his head slightly to one side and then to the other. The constable was glad to have a reason to turn his back, sit in the chair, and give his impression of an electrocuted corpse. When he was propped stiffly against the left-hand side, he explained between his teeth, ‘By rights my hair should be standing on end, sir.’

‘This is quite realistic enough for our purposes,’ said Jowett. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to notice most particularly the position of the left hand which is not gripping the handle as one might expect. In electrocution the muscles contract and the hand takes an even stronger grip on anything it is holding. But what has happened here? The left arm dangles over the left arm of the chair. You may relax, Thackeray.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘So we asked ourselves why the body should have been in this position,’ Jowett continued.

‘Perhaps the handkerchief had fallen on the floor and he was reaching to pick it up,’ suggested Alice. ‘He could grip the left handle with his teeth to maintain the electrical contact.’

‘That’s clever thinking, Miss Probert,’ said Jowett, ‘but it isn’t quite consistent with the facts. Mr Brand couldn’t have received a shock of four hundred volts by doing what you say.’

‘The only way he’d get a shock like that is by touching the main cable,’ said Probert, ‘but it’s out of reach behind the chair. Anyone can see that.’

‘Quite right, Doctor,’ said Jowett. ‘But let us suppose that instead of the damp handkerchief lying on the floor here, as your daughter suggested, it was here.’ He pointed to the transformer. ‘Let us suppose that one end of it was attached to the positive terminal on the main side of the box. What do you suppose would happen if the medium reached out with his hand to recover the handkerchief—which we have seen was essential to his purpose?’

‘He would die the moment he touched it,’ said Strathmore, ‘but are you really asking us to believe that the handkerchief fell from the chair and somehow landed three feet behind it with one corner attached to the positive terminal?’

‘No, sir,’ said Jowett. ‘It was placed there as a deliberate act.’

‘But that would be murder!’ said Nye.

‘It was.’

‘Wait a moment, gentlemen!’ said Alice. ‘I think you have forgotten something. If this theory is to be believed, we should have found the handkerchief attached to the transformer when we discovered poor Mr Brand in here.’

‘We should indeed,’ agreed Jowett, ‘but it was not there or anywhere in sight. And the interesting thing is that there was no handkerchief among the list of possessions found on Mr Brand’s body. We are quite sure that he had one, because he mopped up the chrysanthemum-water with it. There is only one explanation possible, and that is that it was picked up by one of you—after Mr Brand had been murdered.’

The drift of Jowett’s thesis must have been increasingly obvious, but this conclusion still had the effect of stunning everybody. Miss Crush gasped with such force that it was difficult to tell how many smaller intakes of breath occurred at that precise moment.

Probert was the first to respond. ‘Before anyone begins to make assertions about present company, I think you ought to make it absolutely dear, Inspector, that this is an engaging theory without any basis of evidence. I’m no lawyer, but I know enough about the workings of the courts to point out that the Attorney-General himself couldn’t prove what you’re saying without a witness to the facts. Let’s see if we have one, shall we? I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, did any one of you see a handkerchief attached to the transformer as Inspector Jowett has postulated?’ He looked at each person in turn, with eyebrows speculatively raised. ‘You see? Not one witness. You can’t even produce the confounded handkerchief! It’s like trying to prove a poisoning without the arsenic.’

This was clearly not the response Jowett had expected. He frowned, cleared his throat and rubbed the side of his face. He had the look of a conjurer who had waved his wand and been unable to produce a rabbit from his hat.

‘It’s plausible, I’ll grant you that,’ Probert continued, pressing home his advantage, ‘but you’ve got no proof. There’s nothing on earth to show that a wet handkerchief was ever tied to that transformer.’

Sergeant Cribb, who had been a bystander in all this, put his hand in his pocket. The movement, slight as it was, drew the attention from Jowett’s bleak countenance. Cribb withdrew a pocket-book, turned the pages methodically, found his place and opened it. ‘You require some proof, sir? I found these on the carpet beside the transformer.’ He tipped two thin wisps, no more than an inch in length, into his palm and held them out for inspection.

‘What the devil are they?’ asked Probert.

‘Chrysanthemum petals,’ said Cribb. ‘They must have been picked up by Brand’s handkerchief when he wiped the mantelpiece dry. Tiny things, ain’t they? I don’t suppose you noticed them on Saturday when you picked the handkerchief up and put it in your pocket after Peter Brand’s death, Doctor.’

Now for it then! Will you believe me, though?

You’ve heard what I confess; I don’t unsay

A single word:

‘Do you deny it, sir?’ asked Cribb, before Jowett could respond.

‘Deuced impertinence!’ exclaimed Captain Nye. ‘Dr Probert is a member of the Royal Society. I don’t care for this man’s manner, Inspector, any more than I care for the look of this other person with the patch over his eye. If you hadn’t told us he was a policeman, I’d stake my reputation that I met him recently in very disagreeable circumstances. I don’t know what the police are coming to when men of this class are brought into private residences to fling abuse at decent people.’

‘Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray are two of the most experienced detectives in Scotland Yard,’ said Jowett. It should have been a splendid affirmation of confidence. The pity was that Jowett’s emphasis made it sound like an admission that the Force had problems over recruitment. ‘I’m sure no insult was intended, gentlemen.’

Cribb confirmed this with a nod and added mildly, ‘I simply stated a fact.’

The effect of this was to give an extra twist to the curl of Captain Nye’s lips. Not content with resembling a camel, he began to make sounds like one.

‘Please, William,’ Alice appealed to him. ‘For everyone’s sake, keep calm.’

Inspector Jowett, too, was anxious to avoid a scene. He leaned towards Cribb. ‘It might be wise if you withdrew, Sergeant.’

It had been intended as a confidential remark, but Probert was quick to show that he had heard it. ‘No, no, there is no need for that. The sergeant has obviously made a mistake and must accept my word for it. The incident is closed.’

‘Not entirely,’ said Strathmore, with the unsparing persistence of a seeker after truth. ‘If the statement has no basis of fact, you are entitled to an apology at the very least. The Officer seems confident of his facts. Let him substantiate them. Tell us, Sergeant, what reason do you have for stating that Dr Probert picked up the handkerchief?’

Cribb glanced towards Jowett, who looked uneasy, but nodded his consent to proceed.

‘Well, sir, you will recollect that when we pulled aside the curtain on Saturday night and found Mr Brand dead, we were unprepared for the sight that confronted us.’

‘Unprepared!’ cried Alice. ‘That’s an understatement if ever I heard one!’

‘If you say so, miss,’ said Cribb. ‘What matters is that our eyes fastened on Mr Brand. We failed to notice the handkerchief attached to the transformer. Observation is my job, but I don’t mind admitting that I was so taken up with the appearance of the deceased that I didn’t look behind the chair. It’s only on a second look that you notice a thing like that, but when I came to take a second look there wasn’t any handkerchief there.’

‘Is that to be wondered at?’ said Probert. ‘You went upstairs in pursuit of Professor Quayle. By the time you and the inspector came back into the library we had moved the body out of the chair. Any one of us could have picked up the blasted handkerchief.’

‘That’s right, sir. One’s the word. It was a solitary action. There wasn’t anybody else to see you pick it up or we’d have heard about it before now.’

‘But why Papa?’ said Alice. ‘Why do you keep saying
he
was the one?’

‘I’ll explain, miss. First I want you to answer me a question. After the curtain was pulled back, and you saw what had happened, can you remember what you did?’

‘Of course. I attended to Miss Crush. She had started forward as if to touch Mr Brand. Papa shouted a warning, you restrained her and she fainted. I then helped you move her to the couch and I did the things one is recommended to do in cases of collapse, such as loosening her clothes.’

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Miss Crush, putting her hand on Alice’s arm.

‘And you, sir,’ Cribb went on, turning to Nye. ‘What did you do at this time?’

The captain was clearly unhappy about answering questions from an officer of non-commissioned rank, so he gazed imperiously into the distance as he spoke. ‘What did I do? What I seem to have been doing all the week. I went downstairs at the double to turn off the blasted electricity.’

‘How long did it take you to get downstairs?’

‘I wouldn’t know. Not more than a few seconds, I should think. As soon as I had switched the thing off, I shouted up to your inspector.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Cribb turned to Jowett. ‘You were waiting at the top of the stairs, I believe, sir?’

‘That is correct,’ Jowett confirmed. ‘In turn, I shouted to Dr Probert that the current was off.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Cribb addressed Strathmore. ‘And where were you, sir, when Inspector Jowett shouted that the electricity was turned off?’

‘I was beside the fireplace in the library,’ answered Strathmore. ‘Dr Probert had asked me to fetch candles, if you remember, as we had no light in the study.’

‘I do, sir,’ said Cribb with a nod. ‘So we have a clear picture of the situation, ladies and gentlemen. When word came that the electricity was off, Mr Strathmore was in the library lighting the candles. Miss Crush had fainted, and Miss Probert and I were attending to her. Captain Nye was in the basement and Inspector Jowett was at the head of the basement stairs. The only person beside this chair was you, Dr Probert, and that was when you must have picked up the handkerchief and pocketed it. Immediately after, Mr Strathmore brought the candles and then you could not have done it unnoticed, and nor could anyone else.’

There were a few seconds’ silence as people took in the significance of Cribb’s argument. Then eyes began to turn in Probert’s direction, as if by general consent it was his turn to justify himself.

Alice was the last to face him and the first to speak. ‘Papa, this isn’t true, is it?’

Probert took a handkerchief from his pocket, apparently without appreciating the effect this normally innocent action would have on people. He blew his nose and Miss Crush jerked with the shock. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You shall have the truth. I
did
pick up the handkerchief, just as you say, Sergeant.’

‘No!’ said Alice, her face drained of colour. ‘But why, Papa, why?’

‘That should be clear to everyone,’ said Probert. ‘I saw the man lying dead in front of me and there was the chance of avoiding the odium of a murder investigation in my house, so as soon as the current was switched off I pocketed the handkerchief. I burned it later. That’s all it was.’

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Cribb.

‘Are you contradicting me?’ said Probert, more as an inquiry than a challenge.

‘We’ve got to establish the truth, sir. You say you didn’t want a murder investigated in your house, but what made you think of murder? A pocket handkerchief isn’t usually classed as a lethal weapon.’

‘It was attached to the positive terminal of the transformer,’ Probert pointed out.

‘I don’t doubt that, sir. What I doubt is whether that should have suggested murder to you at that particular moment. It would still look more like an accident to me. But perhaps murder was in your mind.’

‘Father!’ said Alice. ‘He has no right to speak to you like that!’

Dr Probert was looking too uncomfortable by far to take issue over Sergeant Cribb’s rights. He silenced Alice by limply waving his hand. ‘Sergeant, I am not sure how it has happened, but you seem to have me against a wall. If you want my full confession to the murder of Peter Brand I am ready to give it to you, but I should prefer not to do so in front of these people who are my friends and family.’

‘Father!’ cried Alice. ‘It can’t be true! It isn’t true!’ She ran to Probert and caught him by the arm. ‘Say it isn’t true!’

‘Go upstairs to your mother and tell her as gently as you can,’ said Probert.

Cribb put up his hand. ‘Before you do that, miss, there’s something you must say to your father. I want you to tell him in your own words—so that he can see you’re telling the gospel truth—that you are not the murderer of Peter Brand.’

‘Are you serious?’ said Alice.

‘Never more serious, miss. Your father believes you arranged to kill Brand to silence him over a certain matter arising from your visits to a hat-shop. On the night of the seance he couldn’t fail to notice that you were collaborating with Brand by tapping the table and claiming to be touched by spirit hands. He concluded that you were being blackmailed by the medium, and when the body was discovered he assumed you were responsible. He picked up the handkerchief, thinking to divert suspicion from you. Unless you can dissuade him, he is now about to make a false confession in order, as he believes, to save you from the hangman’s rope. It’s an admirable gesture, and I’m sure we all applaud him for it, but I hope you can convince him that it isn’t necessary. Constable Thackeray here doesn’t take kindly to copying out statements only to tear ’em up.’

Alice had listened with an expression of disbelief growing into astonishment and finally awe. She shook her head slowly, temporarily unable to find words.

Miss Crush filled the breach. ‘It would be rather extravagant to murder somebody because of something that happened in a hat-shop.’

‘It’s utterly incredible!’ said Alice. ‘Papa, you didn’t really believe this, did you? I agreed to help Peter Brand in the seance to stop him making mischief in the family, but I’ve explained all that. You
know
why I changed my clothes there.’ She gripped her father’s arm and studied his face, searching for some sign of comprehension.

He avoided her eyes. ‘I know that you have accounted for your behaviour, Alice, but that conversation took place on Sunday, remember. On Saturday night, when I saw him dead, I could only think that you must have arranged it in some way. You have always been a strong-headed girl. I saw the handkerchief and I understood how it had been done.’

‘But Peter Brand didn’t bother me to that extent!’ cried Alice. ‘It was to protect
you
from embarrassment that I did what he asked me to do at the seance. It was no reason for killing him. If I had felt strongly about it I should have asked William to give him a thrashing.’

‘By Jove, yes!’ said Nye enthusiastically. ‘The bounder deserved it. It’s a damned shame he isn’t around now, or I’d alter the shape of his nose.’

‘Don’t provoke the departed,’ said Miss Crush, wagging her finger at Nye.

‘Papa,’ said Alice. ‘You
do
see how ridiculous your suspicions were, don’t you?’

‘I need to sit down,’ said Dr Probert. ‘Constable, do you mind?’ Thackeray sprang out of the chair with surprising agility for a corpse and slipped to the back of the group, well out of Captain Nye’s range. Probert took his place. ‘Yes, my dear. I believe you. But
somebody
must have put that handkerchief there, and for a good reason.’

Cribb caught Jowett’s eye. ‘Would you like to explain, sir?’

‘Now that you have started, you might as well continue, Sergeant,’ said the inspector, as if the whole thing bored him.

‘If you insist, sir. Well, we know how Peter Brand came to be electrocuted and we know that somebody must have arranged it. A handkerchief doesn’t fall two feet behind a chair and wind itself around a terminal. We can also tell when it was done.’

‘It must have been after the first interruption,’ said Strathmore. ‘We all went into the study to calm Brand down after the footsteps—which we now know to have been Professor Quayle’s—had broken his concentration. That was when the handkerchief must have been put down. When we resumed, we had normal readings on the galvanometer for a few minutes, and then he must have realised that the handkerchief was on the floor and reached out to pick it up, with fatal consequences.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s exactly how I see it.’

Strathmore smiled. ‘I believe I remarked before that as investigators we are two of a kind, Sergeant.’

‘So you did, sir. There it is, then. Scotland Yard and the Life After Death Society agree how and when the crime was committed. And once you’ve got the “how” and the “when”, the “who” is easier to find.’

‘But any one of us could have attached the end of the handkerchief to the transformer,’ said Alice. ‘It would not have been a conspicuous action by candlelight, and in so much confusion.’

‘Quite right, miss. So we have to find a way to determine who is most likely to have done it.’

‘A motive,’ said Captain Nye.

‘That’s important, yes, sir, but I had something else in mind. Motives are helpful, but when everybody has a motive you can’t rely on them alone.’

‘What do you mean—“everybody”?’ said Nye. ‘I’d like to know what motive you could ascribe to me. I had no interest in doing away with that nasty little table-tapping mountebank.’

‘It’s not necessary to go into the question of motives,’ Cribb firmly explained.

‘Quite right too,’ concurred Miss Crush.

‘I expect he thought you might have been moved to do it on my account,’ Alice suggested to her fiancé.

Nye beamed. ‘That hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘And you do have an ungovernable temper,’ added Alice.

‘Leaving motives aside, then,’ Cribb quickly said, ‘it’s part of a detective’s job to make deductions from the circumstances of a crime. The circumstances here are quite exceptional, because they show that the murder depended on events nobody could have predicted. For Peter Brand to die by electrocution there had to be a wet handkerchief which he would be obliged to reach for, and the purpose of that handkerchief was a secret known only to Brand; there had to be a damp patch on the carpet where his feet made contact, so that the current would pass through his body to earth—and that, in case you have forgotten, was provided by Dr Probert accidentally kicking over the bowl of salt solution; and there had to be an opportunity to put the handkerchief in position—and that only came about by chance because of Professor Quayle’s interruption, when Brand stopped the seance and would not continue until we calmed him down.’