Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03] (29 page)

They returned to the wood, where photographs were taken and careful measurements made of the footprints. The Chief Constable followed these activities with intense interest, looking over Parker’s shoulder as he entered the particulars in his notebook.

“I say,” he said, suddenly, “isn’t it rather odd—”

“Here’s somebody coming,” broke in Parker.

The sound of a motor-cycle being urged in second gear over the rough ground proved to be the herald of a young man armed with a camera.

“Oh, God!” groaned Parker. “The damned Press already.”

He received the journalist courteously enough, showing him the wheel-tracks and the footprints, and outlining the kidnapping theory as they walked back to the place where the body was found.

“Can you give us any idea, Inspector, of the appearance of the two wanted men?”

“Well,” said Parker, “one of them appears to be something of a dandy; he wears a loathsome mauve cap and narrow pointed shoes, and, if those marks on the magazine cover mean anything, one or other of the men may possibly be a coloured man of some kind. Of the second man, all we can definitely say is that he wears number 10 shoes, with rubber heels.”

“I was going to say,” said Pillington, “that, à
propos de bottes,
it is rather remarkable—”

“And this is where we found the body of Miss Findlater,” went on Parker, ruthlessly. He described the injuries and the position of the body, and the journalist gratefully occupied himself with taking photographs, including a group of Wimsey, Parker and the Chief Constable standing among the gorse-bushes, while the latter majestically indicated the fatal spot with his walking-stick.

“And now you’ve got what you want, old son,” said Parker, benevolently, “buzz off, won’t you, and tell the rest of the boys. You’ve got all we can tell you, and we’ve got other things to do beyond granting special interviews.”

The reporter asked no better. This was tantamount to making his information exclusive, and no Victorian matron could have a more delicate appreciation of the virtues of exclusiveness than a modern newspaper man.

“Well now, Sir Charles,” said Parker, when the man had happily chugged and popped himself away, “what were you about to say in the matter of the footprints?”

But Sir Charles was offended. The Scotland Yard man had snubbed him and thrown doubt on his discretion.

“Nothing,” he replied. “I feel sure that my conclusions would appear very elementary to you.”

And he preserved a dignified silence throughout the return journey.

The Whittaker case had begun almost imperceptibly, in the overhearing of a casual remark dropped in a Soho restaurant; it ended amid a roar of publicity that shook England from end to end and crowded even Wimbledon into the second place. The bare facts of the murder and kidnapping appeared exclusively that night in a Late Extra edition of the
Evening Views.
Next morning it sprawled over the Sunday papers with photographs and full details, actual and imaginary. The idea of two English girls—the one brutally killed, the other carried off for some end unthinkably sinister, by a black man—aroused all the passion of horror and indignation of which the English temperament is capable. Reporters swarmed down upon Crow’s Beach like locusts—the downs near Shelly Head were like a fair with motors, bicycles and parties on foot, rushing out to spend a happy week-end amid surroundings of mystery and bloodshed. Parker, who with Wimsey had taken rooms at the Green Lion, sat answering the telephone and receiving the letters and wires which descended upon him from all sides, with a stalwart policeman posted at the end of the passage to keep out all intruders.

Wimsey fidgeted about the room, smoking cigarette after cigarette in his excitement.

“This time we’ve got them,” he said. “They’ve overreached themselves, thank God!”

“Yes. But have a little patience, old man. We can’t lose them—but we must have all the facts first.”

“You’re sure those fellows have got Mrs. Forrest safe?”

“Oh, yes. She came back to the flat on Monday night—or so the garage man says. Our men are shadowing her continually and will let us know the moment anybody comes to the flat.”

“Monday night!”

“Yes. But that’s no proof in itself. Monday night is quite a usual time for week-enders to return to Town. Besides, I don’t want to frighten her till we know whether she’s the principal or merely the accomplice. Look here, Peter, I’ve had a message from another of our men. He’s been looking into the finances of Miss Whittaker and Mrs. Forrest. Miss Whittaker has been drawing out big sums, ever since last December year in cheques to Self, and these correspond almost exactly, amount for amount, with sums which Mrs. Forrest has been paying into her own account. That woman has had a big hold over Miss Whittaker, ever since old Miss Dawson died. She’s in it up to the neck, Peter.”

“I knew it. She’s been doing the jobs while the Whittaker woman held down her alibi in Kent. For God’s sake, Charles, make no mistake. Nobody’s life is safe for a second while either of them is at large.”

“When a woman is wicked and unscrupulous,” said Parker, sententiously, “she is the most ruthless criminal in the world—fifty times worse than a man, because she is always so much more single-minded about it.”

“They’re not troubled with sentimentality, that’s why,” said Wimsey, “and we poor mutts of men stuff ourselves up with the idea that they’re romantic and emotional. All punk, my son. Damn that phone!”

Parker snatched up the receiver.

“Yes—yes—speaking. Good God, you don’t say so. All right. Yes. Yes, of course you must detain him. I think myself it’s a plant, but he must be held and questioned. And see that all the papers have it. Tell ’em you’re sure he’s the man. See? Soak it well into ’em that that’s the official view. And—wait a moment—I want photographs of the cheque and of any finger-prints on it. Send ’em down immediately by a special messenger. It’s genuine, I suppose? The Bank people say it is? Good! What’s his story? … Oh! … any envelope?—Destroyed?—Silly devil. Right. Right. Good-bye.”

He turned to Wimsey with some excitement.

“Hallelujah Dawson walked into Lloyds Bank in Stepney yesterday morning and presented Mary Whittaker’s cheque for £10,000, drawn on their Leahampton branch to Bearer, and dated Friday 24th. As the sum was such a large one and the story of the disappearance was in Friday night’s paper, they asked him to call again. Meanwhile, they communicated with Leahampton. When the news of the murder came out yesterday evening, the Leahampton manager remembered about it and phoned the Yard, with the result that they sent round this morning and had Hallelujah up for a few inquiries. His story is that the cheque arrived on Saturday morning, all by itself in an envelope, without a word of explanation. Of course the old juggins chucked the envelope away, so that we can’t verify his tale or get a line on the post-mark. Our people thought the whole thing looked a bit fishy, so Hallelujah is detained pending investigation—in other words, arrested for murder and conspiracy!”

“Poor old Hallelujah! Charles, this is simply devilish! That innocent, decent old creature, who couldn’t harm a fly.”

“I know. Well, he’s in for it and will have to go through with it. It’s all the better for us. Hell’s bells, there’s somebody at the door. Come in.”

“It’s Dr. Faulkner to see you, sir,” said the constable, putting his head in.

“Oh, good. Come in, doctor. Have you made your examination?”

“I have, Inspector. Very interesting. You were quite right. I’ll tell you that much straight away.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Sit down and tell us all about it.”

“I’ll be as brief as possible,” said the doctor. He was a London man, sent down by Scotland Yard, and accustomed to police work—a lean, grey badger of a man, business-like and keen-eyed, the direct opposite of the “tutster” who had annoyed Parker the evening before.

“Well, first of all, the blow on the head had, of course, nothing whatever to do with the death. You saw yourself that there had been next to no bleeding. The wound was inflicted some time after death—no doubt to create the impression of an attack by a gang. Similarly with the cuts and scratches on the arms. They are the merest camouflage.”

“Exactly. Your colleague—”

“My colleague, as you call him, is a fool,” snorted the doctor. “If that’s a specimen of his diagnosis, I should think there would be a high death-rate in Crow’s Beach. That’s by the way. You want the cause of death?”

“Chloroform?”

“Possibly. I opened the body but found no special symptoms suggestive of poisoning or anything. I have removed the necessary organs and sent them to Sir James Lubbock for analysis at your suggestion, but candidly I expect nothing from that. There was no odour of chloroform on opening the thorax. Either the time elapsed since the death was too long, as is very possible, seeing how volatile the stuff is, or the dose was too small. I found no indications of any heart weakness, so that, to produce death in a healthy young girl, chloroform would have had to be administered over a considerable time.”

“Do you think it was administered at all?”

“Yes, I think it was. The burns on the face certainly suggest it.”

“That would also account for the handkerchief found in the car,” said Wimsey.

“I suppose,” pursued. Parker, “that it would require considerable strength and determination to administer chloroform to a strong young woman. She would probably resist strenuously.”

“She would,” said the doctor, grimly, “but the odd thing is, she didn’t. As I said before, all the marks of violence were inflicted post-mortem.”

“Suppose she had been asleep at the time,” suggested Wimsey, “couldn’t it have been done quietly then?”

“Oh, yes—easily. After a few long breaths of the stuff she would become semi-conscious and then could be more firmly dealt with. It is quite possible, I suppose, that she fell asleep in the sunshine, while her companion wandered off and was kidnapped, and that the kidnappers then came along and got rid of Miss Findlater.”

“That seems a little unnecessary,” said Parker. “Why come back to her at all?”

“Do you suggest that they both fell asleep and were both set on and chloroformed at the same time? It sounds rather unlikely.”

“I don’t. Listen, doctor—only keep this to yourself.”

He outlined the history of their suspicions about Mary Whittaker, to which the doctor listened in horrified amazement.

“What happened,” said Parker, “as we think, is this. We think that for some reason Miss Whittaker had determined to get rid of this poor girl who was so devoted to her. She arranged that they should go off for a picnic and that it should be known where they were going to. Then, when Vera Findlater was dozing in the sunshine, our theory is that she murdered her—either with chloroform or—more likely, I fancy—by the same method that she used upon her other victims, whatever that was. Then she struck her on the head and produced the other appearances suggestive of a struggle, and left on the bushes a cap which she had previously purchased and stained with brilliantine. I am, of course, having the cap traced. Miss Whittaker is a tall, powerful woman—I don’t think it would be beyond her strength to inflict that blow on an unresisting body.”

“But how about these footmarks in the wood?”

“I’m coming to that. There are one or two very odd things about them. To begin with, if this was the work of a secret gang, why should they go out of their way to pick out the one damp, muddy spot in twenty miles of country to leave their footprints in, when almost anywhere else they could have come and gone without leaving any recognisable traces at all?”

“Good point,” said the doctor. “And I add to that, that they must have noticed they’d left a cap behind. Why not come back and remove it?”

“Exactly. Then again. Both pairs of shoes left prints entirely free from the marks left by wear and tear. I mean that there were no signs of the heels or soles being worn at all, while the rubbers on the larger pair were obviously just out of the shop. We shall have the photographs here in a moment, and you will see. Of course, it’s not impossible that both men should be wearing brand new shoes, but on the whole it’s unlikely.”

“It is,” agreed the doctor.

“And now we come to the most suggestive thing of all. One of the supposed men had very much bigger feet than the other, from which you would expect a taller and possibly heavier man with a longer stride. But on measuring the footprints, what do we find? In all three cases—the big man, the little man and the woman—we have exactly the same length of stride. Not only that, but the footprints have sunk into the ground to precisely the same depth, indicating that all three people were of the same weight. Now, the other discrepancies might pass, but that is absolutely beyond the reach of coincidence.”

Dr. Faulkner considered this for a moment.

“You’ve proved your point,” he said at length. “I consider that absolutely convincing.”

“It struck even Sir Charles Pillington, who is none too bright,” said Parker. “I had the greatest difficulty in preventing him from blurting out the extraordinary agreement of the measurements to that
Evening Views
man.”

“You think, then, that Miss Whittaker had come provided with these shoes and produced the tracks herself.”

“Yes, returning each time through the bracken. Cleverly done. She had made no mistake about superimposing the footprints. It was all worked out to a nicety—each set over and under the two others, to produce the impression that three people had been there at the same time. Intensive study of the works of Mr. Austin Freeman, I should say.”

“And what next?”

“Well, I think we shall find that this Mrs. Forrest, who we think has been her accomplice all along, had brought her car down—the big car, that is—and was waiting there for her. Possibly she did the making of the footprints while Mary Whittaker was staging the assault. Anyhow, she probably arrived there after Mary Whittaker and Vera Findlater had left the Austin and departed to the hollow on the downs. When Mary Whittaker had finished her part of the job, they put the handkerchief and the magazine called
The Black Mask
into the Austin and drove off in Mrs. Forrest’s car. I’m having the movements of the car investigated, naturally. It’s a dark blue Renault four-seater, with Michelin balloon-tyres, and the number is XO4247. We know that it returned to Mrs. Forrest’s garage on the Monday night with Mrs. Forrest in it.”