Murder Must Advertise (34 page)

It is not to be supposed that the great Whiffle-Way, in all its comprehensive perfection, sprang fully armed from Mr. Bredon's brain when Mr. Armstrong uttered the words, Family Appeal. All that then happened was a mental association with the phrase Family Hotel, coupled with a faint consciousness of inner illumination. He replied, humbly, “Yes, I see; I'll try to work out something,” gathered up some sheets of paper on which Mr. Armstrong had scribbled a few illegible notes and a thing that looked like a hedgehog, and made his way out. He had taken six steps down the passage when the idiotic slogan: “If that's what you want, you can Whiffle for it,” took possession of his brain; two steps further on, this repellent sentence had recast itself as: “All you Want by Whiffling,” and on the threshold of his own room, the first practical possibility of Whiffledom struck him like a sledge-hammer. Fired with excitement, he hurled himself at his desk, snatched a scribbling-block, and had written the word “WHIFFLE” in capitals an inch high, when Miss Rossiter arrived with the message that Mr. Parker urgently requested Mr. Bredon to ring him up on the Whitehall number. Lord Peter Wimsey was so intimately in the skin of Mr. Death Bredon that he said: “Damn!” loudly and heartily.

Nevertheless, he obeyed the call, presented himself with leave of absence on urgent private business, and went down to Scotland Yard, where he surveyed the clothes and effects of the man in the dress suit.

“No doubt we shall end by having to circularize the laundries,” said Parker. “Perhaps a photograph in some of the London and provincial papers would be as well. I loathe newspapers, but they do advertise one's requirements, and some of these laundry-marks may come from outside London
....
”

Wimsey looked at him.

“Advertisement, my dear Charles, may be desirable in the case of laundries, but for people like ourselves it does not exist. A gentleman whose clothes are so well cut, and who yet deprives his tailor of the credit for them is, like ourselves, not of the advertising sort. This, I see, is his top-hat, mysteriously uninjured.”

“It had rolled beyond the train, on to the farther line.”

“Quite. Here again the maker's golden imprint has been removed. How absurd, Charles! One does not–at least, you and I and this gentleman do not–consider the brand to be the guarantee of quality. For us, the quality guarantees the brand. There are two hatters in London who could have made this hat, and you have doubtless already observed that the crown is markedly dolichocephalic, while the curve of the brim is also characteristic. It is a thought behind the present fashion; yet the article is undoubtedly of recent manufacture. Send one of your sleuths to each of these two establishments and ask for the customer with the elongated head who has a fancy for this type of brim. Do not waste your time on laundry-marks, which are, at best, tedious and, at worst, deceptive.”

“Thanks,” said Parker. “I thought you might be able to put your finger either on the hatter or the tailor.”

The first hatter they visited proved to be the right man. He directed their researches to the flat of a Mr. Horace Mountjoy, who lived in Kensington. They armed themselves with a search-warrant and visited the flat.

Mr. Mountjoy, they ascertained from the commissionaire, was a bachelor of quiet habits, except that he was frequently out rather late at night. He lived alone, and was waited upon and valeted by the staff belonging to the block of flats.

The commissionaire came on duty at 9 o'clock. There was no night porter. Between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. the outer door was locked and could be opened by the tenants with their own keys, without disturbing him in his basement flat. He had seen Mr. Mountjoy go out the previous evening at about 7.45, in evening dress. He had not seen him return. Withers, the valet, would probably be able to say whether Mr. Mountjoy had been in that night.

Withers was able to say positively that he had not. Nobody had entered Mr. Mountjoy's flat but himself, and the chambermaid who did the rooms. The bed had not been slept in. That was nothing unusual with Mr. Mountjoy. He was frequently out all night, though he generally returned to breakfast at 9.30.

Parker displayed his official card, and they went upstairs to a flat on the third floor. Withers was about to open the door with his pass-key, which, as he explained, he was accustomed to use in the mornings, to avoid disturbing the tenants, but Parker stopped him and produced the two keys which had been taken from the corpse. One of them fitted the lock and established, without much doubt, that they had come to the right place.

Everything in the flat was in perfect order. There was a desk in the sitting-room, containing a few bills and some notepaper, but its drawers were all unlocked and it appeared to hold no secrets. Nor was there anything remarkable about the bedroom or the small dining-room. In the bathroom was a little cupboard containing the usual toilet articles and household medicines. Parker made a rapid inventory of these, pausing for a few minutes over a packet labelled “Bicarbonate of Soda,” but touch and taste soon assured him that this contained exactly what it purported to contain. The only thing that could be considered in the slightest degree out of the ordinary in the whole establishment was the presence (also in the bathroom cupboard) of several packets of cigarette papers.

“Did Mr. Mountjoy roll his own cigarettes?”

“I never saw him do so,” replied Withers. “He smoked Turkish Abdullas as a rule.”

Parker nodded and impounded the cigarette-papers. A further search disclosed no loose tobacco. A number of boxes of cigars and cigarettes were retrieved from the dining-room sideboard. They looked innocent and a few, which Parker promptly slit open, proved to contain excellent tobacco and nothing else. Parker shook his head.

“You'll have to go through everything very carefully, Lumley.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any letters by the first post?”

There were none.

“Any visitors today?”

“No, sir. Not unless you count the man from the post-office.”

“Oh? What did
he
want?”

“Nothing,” replied Withers, “except to bring the new telephone directory.” He indicated the two clean volumes which lay upon the sitting-room desk.

“Oh!” said Parker. This did not sound promising. “Did he come into the room?”

“No, sir. He knocked at the door when Mrs. Trabbs and I were both here. Mrs. Trabbs was sweeping, sir, and I was brushing Mr. Mountjoy's lounge suit. I took the books in, sir, and handed him out the old ones.”

“I see. All right. And beyond sweeping and brushing and so on, you disturbed nothing?”

“No, sir.”

“Anything in the waste-paper basket?”

“I could not say, sir. Mrs. Trabbs would know.”

Mrs. Trabbs, produced, said there had been nothing in the waste-paper basket except a wine-merchant's circular. Mr. Mountjoy wrote very little and did not receive many letters.

Satisfied that there had been no interference with the flat since the occupant had left the night before, Parker turned his attention to the wardrobe and chest of drawers, where he found various garments, all properly marked with the names of the tailor or shirt-maker responsible for them. He noticed that all were by first-class artists in their own line. Another silk hat, similar to the one now resting at Scotland Yard, but with sweat-band and crown undisfigured, was found in a hat-box; there were also several felt hats and a bowler, all by first-class makers.

“Mr. Mountjoy was a rich man?”

“He appeared to be in very easy circumstances, sir. He did himself well; the best of everything. Especially during the last year or so.”

“What was his profession?”

“I think he was a gentleman of independent means. I never heard of him being engaged in any business.”

“Did you know that he had a silk hat from which the maker's name had been removed?”

“Yes, sir. He was very angry about it. Said that some friend of his had damaged the hat for a rag. I offered several times to get it put right, sir, but when he had cooled down he said it didn't matter. It wasn't a hat he very often used, sir. And besides, he said, why should he be a walking advertisement for his hatter?”

“Did you know that his dress suit had also lost the tailor's tab?”

“Had it indeed, sir? No, I can't say I noticed it.”

“What sort of man was Mr. Mountjoy?”

“A very pleasant gentleman, sir. I'm very sorry to hear he has met with such a sad accident.”

“How long has he lived here?”

“Six or seven years, I believe, sir. I've been here four years myself.”

“When was the practical joke played on his silk hat?”

“About eighteen months ago, sir, if I remember rightly.”

“As long ago as that? I fancied the hat looked newer.”

“Well, sir, as I say, he didn't wear it above once or twice a week, sir. And Mr. Mountjoy didn't trouble about the fashion of his hats. There was one particular shape he fancied, and he had all his hats specially made to that pattern.”

Parker nodded. He knew this already from the hatter and from Wimsey, but it was well to check matters up. He reflected that he had never yet caught Wimsey tripping in any fact pertaining to dress.

“Well,” he said, “as you may have guessed, Withers, there will have to be an inquiry about Mr. Mountjoy's death. You had better say as little as possible to any outside person. You will give me all the keys of the flat, and I shall be leaving the police in charge here for a day or two.”

“Very good, sir.”

Parker waited to ascertain the name and address of the proprietor of the flats, and left Lumley to his investigations. From the proprietor he gained very little information. Mr. Mountjoy, of no profession, had taken the flat six years previously. He had paid his rent regularly. There had been no complaints. Nothing was known of Mr. Mountjoy's friends or relations. It was regrettable that so good a tenant should have come to so sudden and sad an end. It was much to be hoped that nothing would transpire of a scandalous nature, as those flats had always been extremely respectable.

Parker's next visit was to Mr. Mountjoy's bank. Here he encountered the usual obstructive attitude, but eventually succeeded in getting access to the books. There was a regular income of about a thousand a year derived from sound investments. No irregularities. No mysterious fluctuations. Parker came away with an uneasy impression that Mr. Hector Puncheon had discovered a mare's nest.

ECCENTRIC BEHAVIOUR OF A POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT

T
he Chief-Inspector voiced this opinion to Wimsey the same evening. His lordship, whose mind was still divided between detection and the new Whifflet campaign, which had taken clear shape during the afternoon, was curt with him:

“Mare's nest? Then what knocked Puncheon out? A kick from the mare's heel?”

“Perhaps Mountjoy merely got fed up with him. You'd get fed up yourself if you were pursued all over London by a Puncheon.”

“Possibly. But I shouldn't knock him out and leave him to his fate. I should give him in charge. How is Puncheon?”

“Still unconscious. Concussion. He seems to have got a violent blow on the temple and a nasty crack on the back of the head.”

“Um. Knocked up against the wall, probably, when Mountjoy got him with the cosh.”

“No doubt you're right.”

“I am always right. I hope you are keeping an eye on the man Garfield.”

“He won't move for a bit. Why?”

“Well–it's odd that Mountjoy should have been snuffed out so inconveniently for you.”

“You don't suppose that Garfield had anything to do with it? Why, the man was nearly killed himself. Besides, we've looked into him. He's a well-known Harley Street man, with a large West-end practice.”

“Among the dope-maniacs, perhaps?”

“He specializes in nervous complaints.”

“Exactly.”

Parker whistled.

“That's what you think, is it?”

“See here,” said Wimsey, “your grey matter isn't functioning as it ought. Are you tired at the end of the day? Do you suffer from torpor and lethargy after meals? Try Sparkletone, the invigorating vegetable saline that stimulates while it cleanses. Some accidents are too accidental to be true. When a gentleman removes his tailor's tab and takes the trouble to slice his hatter's imprint away with a razor, and goes skipping, for no reason at all, from Finchley to South Kensington Museum in his dress suit at unearthly hours in the morning, it's because he has something to hide. If he tops up his odd behaviour by falling under a train without the smallest apparent provocation, it's because somebody else is interested in getting the things hidden, too. And the more risks somebody else takes in the process, the more certain it is that the thing is worth hiding.”

Parker looked at him and grinned quietly.

“You're a great guesser, Peter. Would you be surprised to hear that you're not the only one?”

“No, I shouldn't. You're holding something out on me. What is it? A witness to the assault, what? Somebody who was on the platform? Somebody you weren't inclined to pay much attention to? You old leg-puller, I can see it in your face. Out with it now–who was it? A woman. A hysterical woman. A middle-aged, hysterical spinster. Am I right?”

“Curse you, yes.”

“Go on, then. Tell me all about it.”

“Well, when Eagles took the depositions of the witnesses at the station, they all agreed that Mountjoy had walked several paces past Garfield and then suddenly staggered; that Garfield had caught him by the arm and that both had fallen together. But this female, Miss Eliza Tebbutt by name, 52, unmarried, housekeeper, living in Kensington, says that she was standing a little way beyond them both and that she distinctly heard what she describes as a 'dreadful voice' say, 'Punch away, you're
for
it!' That Mountjoy immediately stopped as though he had been shot, and that Garfield 'with a terrible face,' took him by the arm and tripped him up. It may increase your confidence in this good lady when you hear that she is subject to nervous disorders, has once been confined in a mental home and is persuaded that Garfield is a prominent member of a gang whose object is to murder all persons of British birth and establish the supremacy of the Jews in England.”