Case with No Conclusion (2 page)

“Well, let's hope it does happen,” I returned.

“Though I don't know,” added Beef, with heavy jocularity, “that I should be in a hurry to trace her. I should be more inclined to congratulate him, and leave it at that.”

I
T
must have been a fortnight later when I received a 'phone call from the Sergeant saying that Mr. Peter Ferrers was due to come and see him at four o'clock that day.

“It's this Sydenham case,” he added breathlessly; “his brother's charged with murder and he's come to me to clear him. What do you say to that?”

I said nothing very much, except to congratulate Beef on the opportunity, and to promise that I would join him in Lilac Crescent at three-thirty.

As I sat with him waiting I didn't much like the way that the case was already following the precedents. Here we were not five hundred yards from Baker Street expecting the inevitable ring. And when Mrs. Beef put her head in the door to say that our first customer was looking at the numbers outside, I felt no particular excitement.

“Customer,” roared Beef, as his wife went out to the passage; “she ought to know better than that. Client's the word.”

But the young man who was shown in would
have been the first to disclaim the pretentiousness of that title. He was perhaps twenty-eight years old, slim and fair, with an open intelligent face, and dressed inconspicuously. I was glad to see none of the inconsequential regalia that young men so often carry—badges in buttonholes, ties of some immensely significant design, shirts of some knowing colour, all implying that they belong to this school or that movement. Beef eyed him appraisingly, and his first words surprised me.

“I've met you before, sir,” he said pleasantly.

“Really?” said the young man. “I don't remember it.”

“Ah, but you will when I tell you,” replied Beef, his face spreading into a good-natured smile. “Don't you remember that Darts Championship when you and another young fellow played me and George Watson in the semi-finals? I finished on a hundred and twenty-seven that night. Treble nineteen, double top, and double fifteen. Nice get-out, that was.”

Mr. Peter Ferrers nodded amicably. “Oh yes,” he said, “I do remember now.”

“Still,” said Beef, with an air of coming to business, “you didn't come here to talk about darts, did you? What can I do for you?”

“Briefly,” said the young man, “you can save my brother from being hanged for the murder of Doctor Benson, which he certainly didn't commit.”

“Ah,” said Beef, pronouncing that non-committal
monosyllable as though he knew all, but would say nothing at this point.

“Perhaps you have read the case,” went on young Ferrers. “The papers have already given it a title—the Sydenham Murder, it's called.”

“I don't hardly think it's fair, the way they make stories out of real murders, do you, sir? It's poaching on the detective novelist's department, I think. Torso Mystery, Burning Car Case and that.”

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable, and wondered what young Ferrers could think of Beef. However, the latter had pulled out the enormous notebook which had followed him from his police-force days, and prepared to take down the details.

“My brother lived in Sydenham,” said young Ferrers, “in a house called the Cypresses; one of those big gloomy mansions built for rich Victorian city men. We were both brought up there. When my father died a couple of years ago my brother decided to stay on. I believe he had an offer for the site from a Building Society—I could never understand his not accepting it. For in spite of our associations with the place it was inconvenient, cold, and cheerless. However, he's a bit of a sentimentalist and wouldn't leave the home. On Thursday night, a fortnight ago today, he gave a small bachelor party to which he invited Doctor Benson, who had been our family doctor for years. He didn't actually bring us into the world, being a man of forty-five himself, but since he had set up
his plate in Sydenham fifteen or twenty years ago he had attended my father and us. I should perhaps explain the relationship because I think it's an unusual one. I never very much cared for Benson, finding him intolerant, and of a brusque, almost brutal disposition. He had a small gymnasium at the back of his house, and I remember that when we were boys, he persuaded my father to send us round to spar with him, and I think he took pleasure in knocking us about. But he kept my father's confidence, and that, I suppose, accounts for my brother's keeping up the friendship.”

“What about his wife?” broke in Beef suddenly and rather rudely. It was evident that he had read newspaper accounts of the case.

Young Ferrers looked up, and for the first time I noticed some emotion in his face, though I couldn't altogether define it.

“Mrs. Benson,” he said slowly, “is a very handsome and a very charming woman. Benson married her five years ago, and it seems that the police pay great attention to the fact that my brother was supposed to have been his rival at the time. I should prefer to say no more about this. You can meet the lady yourself, and if she is prepared to answer questions, you can ask them.”

There was a moment's silence, and then Peter Ferrers continued: “The other guests at dinner were Brian Wakefield, who is a friend and colleague of mine, and myself. I had been trying for some time to interest my brother in the paper I run,
and had wanted him to meet Wakefield, who is my fellow-editor.”

“What paper's that?” I asked.

“It's called the
Passing Moment,
” said young Ferrers.

“Do you put bits about books in it?” asked Beef at once. “Because I don't remember reading nothing about either of my cases in a paper with that name to it.”

“I'm afraid we're chiefly concerned with politics,” said young Ferrers mildly.

“What kind of politics?”

“Oh, vaguely towards the Left,” Peter Ferrers told him.

Beef nodded. “That means you're a bit on the Socialist side, then?” he said. “Well, I voted Labour myself last election. I mean, I wouldn't like to see nothing like what's going on in Russia in this country, but I couldn't stand one of these jumped-up dictators, holding his hand out as though he had something in it what he wanted to keep away from his nostrils.”

And with that summary of his political views Beef seemed satisfied. I, on the other hand, examined young Ferrers with a new, and not altogether sympathetic, interest. I disapproved of his type, which, however idealistic, seemed to me to be a disturbing element. But I could see that Beef liked him.

“Perhaps,” said Peter Ferrers calmly, “we had better return to the matter I came to discuss. We
dined at eight, and at half-past nine I and Wakefield left. He lives in a little flat in Blackfriars—three rooms, which I told him might be offices, but which he has converted into quite pleasant living quarters, and claims that they are quiet at night and perfectly convenient. I then drove on to the big block of service flats near the Marble Arch, in which I live, reaching there, I suppose, at about half-past ten.”

“Did anyone see you come in?” I asked.

“I said ‘Good evening' to the porter,” replied young Ferrers, “and asked him if anyone had called for me, as I was half expecting another friend to come round during the evening. He said that no one had been there, and I went to bed.”

Already in my mind the beginnings of a possibility were forming.

“You won't mind if I ask you,” I said, “whether there is a way out of your flat except by the front door? I'm visualizing the possibility of some accusation being made against you,” I added pacifically.

Peter Ferrers seemed quite undisturbed. “There is a service lift at the back by which I sometimes come in and out, but it would not be possible to come in this way after eleven o'clock when the outer doors are locked. There is also a fire-escape, but it leads down into an open court out of which there is no exit without disturbing the people who live round it.”

“When did you first hear of the murder?” I persisted.

“Duncan, the butler, rang me up at nine o'clock next morning, and I went straight down there. It appears that after I left two of the servants heard a violent quarrel between my brother Stewart and Doctor Benson.”

I groaned. “There is always a violent quarrel,” I said. “How can I expect to make a good story of Beefs cases, when they conform so closely to type?”

“I'm bound to admit,” said Ferrers rather curtly, “that I'm less concerned wth your efforts at fiction than I am with the clearing of my brother's name.”

“Quite right,” approved Beef, “it's only natural. Go on, Mr. Ferrers.”

“After a while my brother rang for Duncan, told him that he'd want nothing more, and that he would show Benson out himself. Duncan locked up everywhere, as was his habit, and went to bed. The other servants had already gone up. Nothing more was known until a housemaid came down in the morning and found the doctor's body in an armchair in the library where he and my brother had been sitting. He had been stabbed in the throat-apparently with a single blow which had opened the jugular vein. An ornamental dagger which my father had bought many years before in an antique shop, and which normally lay on the library table, had been used, and had been put back on the table beside the chair in which the corpse was. My brother's finger-prints were found on the dagger, and in the room itself only those left by the guests
of the night before. My brother, of course, knew nothing about it. He had shown Doctor Benson out some time, he thought, between eleven and half-past, and had gone straight up to bed. He had heard nothing during the night, and was sleeping soundly when he was called the following morning. That is as much as we know for certain.”

“The front door was locked when the servants came down in the morning, I take it?” asked Beef.

“Yes, as usual, by the Yale lock. It's not bolted, as my brother gives the servants all the freedom he can, and if the girls want to go to the cinema or a dance they come in that way.”

“There was no sign of anyone having broken in anywhere?” asked Beef.

“None whatever.”

“Who had latch-keys?”

“The butler, Wilson, the chauffeur-gardener, the cook, and the two girls.”

“And you?” I asked.

Young Ferrers smiled. “No,” he said, “I used to have one when I lived at home, but I haven't seen it for years. I've had no need for it lately anyway.”

“Then it looks,” said Beef, “as though either your brother isn't speaking the truth about showing Benson out, or someone that had a latch-key brought him in. Or else he had a latch-key himself.”

“Yes, those are the three possibilities, I suppose,” said Ferrers.

“Very funny. Very funny indeed,” was Beefs solemn reflection. “I suppose the best thing we can
do is to get down to this house and have a look round. What about going straight away?”

“Very well,” said young Ferrers, rising with some relief.

“There's just one thing,” said Beef, “which is important in any murder case, and I should say is more important in this one than usual. What time did the doctor say Benson was killed?”

“Well,” said Ferrers, “he didn't give an exact time. He said that Benson must have died somewhere within an hour either side of midnight. That was as far as he could say.”

R
AIN
was falling gently, and it was already dusk when we climbed into Peter Ferrers's car. The shining grey pavements of Lilac Crescent were almost empty in the pause just before the stream of people began to flow from the offices around to the nearest Underground station, and the anonymous occupants of the street itself began to drop home in ones and twos. Ferrers pulled up the grey hood of the large, shabby touring car which he had left standing outside Beefs door, and started the engine.

Beef sat forward in his seat uneasily and watched the traffic.

“Lucky for you I'm not still in the Force,” he said at last; “you don't let nothing past, do you? In the built-up area too.”

Young Ferrers did not answer, but sat almost carelessly in the driving-seat with only one hand on the wheel. The car swung easily between trams and blocked traffic.

Soon the traffic thinned as we got away from the centre of the town and the car kept at an even steady speed. Beef was silent for a long time. Then suddenly he turned to Ferrers. “What did you say the name of this house was?” he asked.

“The Cypresses.”

“Funny. I thought you said the cider presses. Just shows how the stomach interferes with the ear sometimes. That's psychology, isn't it?” he added, turning to me.

But Ferrers interrupted. We had just turned into a long, wide street lined on either side by a high wooden fence which the rain had made black and protective.

“This is the road,” said young Ferrers; “the house is just up here on the left.”

As the car slowed down I realized what had inspired the unattractive name of the place. Half a dozen tall trees stood inside the fence so that the house was not visible from the road. They were dark, unjoyous things, not at all like the green flames Van Gogh found them to be in his paintings. They hung like a gloomy backcloth, the light from the street lamps flattening them and the fence into one dark wall.

The front gate stood open and Ferrers drove straight in. The house that stood before us must have been built in the same period that Elizabeth Barrett Browning's father had designed and built that large half-Turkish palace in which he never lived. Large houses of this type always seemed to express something of their owner's revolt against the age he lived in, as though the only relief from the “big business” of the period was in the slight fantasy of its architecture.