Murder of a Snob (28 page)

“On Saturday, the fifth, Mr. Querk's secretary called here for a package. Will you tell me, please, what that package contained?”

“Why, a wig, Colonel!” He added: “We are posticheurs.”

“I couldn't tell that from the outside,” remarked Crisp.

“Three men out of four are as sensitive as women about their wigs. They would never come here if we were to hang out a sign,” the manager explained. “The wig was made for Lord Watlington. Mr. Querk originally ordered a wig for him many years ago, when he was ‘Mr. Cornboise.' He was not content with the service he received in Africa. We moulded the original from the measurements of a wig made in Johannesburg.”

The registered package on the table in the hall had contained a wig! A fact known to Querk—almost certainly known to Querk alone.

Crisp knew next to nothing about wigs. With half a dozen questions he obtained more knowledge than is possessed by most wearers. The manager, flattered by the intelligent interest of a Chief Constable, offered to show him the workrooms. He was taken through an outer workroom where two men and five girls were treating hair in the crude form in which it was received from the factory : thence to the room, part workshop part studio, where three highly skilled operatives were engaged upon the final stages.

Each man was sitting at his own bench, before him a wooden head, faceless, like the head of an artist's lay figure. The walls of the room were lined with tiers of numbered lockers, each containing the dummy of a client's head.

At one of the benches an operative was leaning over his dummy, stroking the wig with an instrument looking very like a domestic flat-iron. He stopped working, to explain to Crisp what he was doing.

But Crisp was not listening. He was staring at the wig. The colour was iron grey, but the shape and the set of it reminded him vividly of Watlington's wig.

Suddenly he picked up the flat iron, swung it with moderate force and crashed it onto the crown of the wig, cracking the crown of the dummy.

“Hold him—he's mad!” cried the operative.

The manager gaped with horror, convinced that he had been entertaining a man with a perverted mania.

“I'm quite safe. I'm a police officer investigating the murder of one of your clients in one of your wigs. I'm sorry I've spoilt your careful work. Before long you'll know why I did it, and perhaps you won't mind.”

Crisp studied the dummy. The sides of the wig jutted out over the temples of the dummy.

“Why does it stick out like that over the temples?” he asked.

The operative explained how the plectyt mounting for the hair is shaped. Crisp asked a few questions and made another experiment with the remains of the wig.

Having made satisfactory arrangements covering the cost of the damage Crisp departed in a state of mind not far removed from jubilation.

The next item on his programme was Glenda Parsons. He drove to the flatlet in Brondesbury, which she was sharing with another girl who was in employment. Glenda was ‘resting' and was found at home, unglamorous in a cotton house frock,, which served as a dressing gown.

“
Oo
! Has anything gone wrong?” Taller than Crisp, she looked down at him with stupidly frightened eyes.

“I don't know yet.” This woman had been the indirect cause of the murder—a non-moral creature, the prey of ansemic fear and an equally anaemic greed, too vacillating to exploit her physical beauty with any consistency. He ascertained that there was no one else in the flatlet.

“I have seen the statement you signed for Mr. Querk!”

“There now! He promised faithfully he wouldn't show it to anyone!”

“He lied to you. As you lied to me when you told me you were waiting in that car for an imaginary Mr. Harris.”

“I was only being tactful.”

“Well, don't be tactful again or you may have reason to be very sorry for yourself. Was that statement you signed true?”

“Yes. He questioned me again and again about it, and all over again when we got to his office,”

“Where did you pick up that piece of brown paper?”

“In that awful little room where you were going on at me. It was in the chair. I pulled the chair out from the table and sat down without looking. There was something hard, and that paper. And as I wanted the paper—”

“What was the something hard?”

“I don't know. I pushed it down behind me while you were talking. It's one of those carpetty chairs, if you remember—brocade—and I suppose it slid down into the fold at the back. Don't you remember you told me not to crackle with the paper?”

That was all Crisp wanted.

“It's safer to lie to Querk than to lie to the police,” he remarked. “If he asks you whether I've seen you, you'd better deny it. Just say ‘no.' Don't try and prove it, or he won't believe you.”

On his way back to headquarters, Crisp turned into Watlington Lodge. Querk had gone to his office and the servants were in sole possession. Claudia, he knew, was staying at the Red Lion.

He went into the morning-room, pulled one of the upright chairs from the table—a brocaded chair, with the tail of the back folded under the seat.

He worked his fingers under the fold and produced a pair of pliers. He wrapped the pliers for microscopic examination and placed them carefully in his pocket.

“Bessie, I want a pair of pliers. Can you help?”

“Yes, sir.” Bessie went to the hall table, pulled out a rather ill-fitted drawer.

“There
was
a pair here, sir, but it's gone. Now I come to think of it, one of those Harridge's men's probably borrowed it for keeps. I'll ask cook if she knows of another pair.”

“Dont bother, thanks,” said Crisp. “I'll manage without.”

That, Crisp reflected, clicked into place.

On the telephone, he spoke to headquarters.

“Chief Constable speaking from Watlington Lodge. Ring me back here in two minutes, and keep ringing until I answer.”

He switched the extension so that the bell would ring in the library. Then he went upstairs to the bedroom occupied by Querk.

In case Bessie might be roving, he locked himself in. The imprint of Querk's personality was immediately obvious. On the dressing table a stolidly liberal toilet equipment, including an eau-de-cologne spray and a bottle of smelling salts. A framed photograph of Watlington, to which a crepe surround had been fastened—a fashion that was disappearing in the 1890's. On a bedside table, leather bound editions of
Simple Thoughts
and
Alice in Wonderland
.

In five minutes he had satisfied himself that the room had been deliberately prepared for his inspection—that he would find nothing he was not meant to find.

On the way back to the hall, he chuckled with profound satisfaction. He was so well pleased with himself that he evolved a boyish riddle: ‘I searched your room and found nothing. But in your room I found what I sought.'

He sobered up in the hall when he heard faintly the regular burr of the telephone bell.

No sign of Bessie.

Crisp went into the library, lifted the receiver and announced himself.

“You told me to ring you back, sir.”

“Oh yes! How long have you been ringing?”

“Six-and-a-half-minutes from the first ring, sir.”

“All right. I don't want anything, now. You can hang up.”

Six-and-a-half minutes. That clicked into place, too. But nothing could now prevent Ralph from appearing before the Judge tomorrow morning.

The Half smile remained unshattered during the time Ralph Cornboise was in court. The serenity with which he received sentence of death had nothing in common with the sullen, unimaginative courage of the tough. It impressed the Judge. It deceived the warders.

In a room off the court sat potential members of a jury, to be empanelled should the plea of guilty be withdrawn at the last moment. The potential witnesses waited in another room—Claudia Lofting, Fenchurch, Mrs. Cornboise, Querk and Bessie, together with medical and police personnel. Crisp, with Benscombe, was in the well of the court, to give formal evidence of the murder, of the arrest and of the confession.

There are forms to be observed, even when there is no trial. Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed before Treasury counsel laid down his papers and directly addressed the Judge.

“As your lordship is aware, a plea of guilty to the charge of murder is sometimes an embarrassment to the Prosecution. I would like to acknowledge that both the police and the governor of the prison have made unremitting efforts to persuade the prisoner to plead not guilty.

“In case your lordship should feel inclined to add your own persuasion—and what I have to say is relevant to that possibility only—I would point out that, apart from several inaccuracies, there are two major mis-statements in the revised confession signed by the prisoner. One is that the prisoner struck deceased through his wig. There is incontrovertible evidence that the wig was undamaged, from which we may infer that the wig must have been removed and replaced after the blow. The other concerns the die-stamp—undoubtedly the weapon used. There is evidence that the die-stamp was not handled in the manner described by the prisoner.

“There is the further fact—extraneous to the prisoner's statement but strikingly inconsistent with his account of the crime—that, by means of a pen-knife, a signet ring was removed from deceased's finger after death, and replaced. In short, my lord, there is enough debatable material to provide a basis for a feasible defence in the hands of learned counsel. Thank you, my lord.”

The Judge turned to the prisoner.

“You have heard what learned counsel said to me. Do you understand that you can make, at this moment if you wish, a technical plea of not guilty, which would enable you to have a fair trial?”

“Yes, my lord. But I do not wish to be tried.”

“Do you further understand that a trial would enable me to take notice of any mitigating circumstances and possibly to reduce the charge from one of murder to one of manslaughter?”

“Thank you, my lord, but there are no mitigating circumstances.”

The judge seemed to be considering a further appeal to the prisoner and to decide that it would be futile.

“I see that your purpose is fixed. I have before me the statement of two eminent alienists that you are of sound mind and capable of understanding your position. It is therefore my duty to pass sentence upon you …”

“I know that there can be no question of appeal or commutation. But I've still got more than a fortnight in which to correct one or two mistakes.” Crisp had been detained in the corridor by the D.P.P. himself, who had been conducting a case in another court.

“Correcting mistakes will get you nowhere.” The eminent lawyer raised his wig to take advantage of the welcome draught. “A confession, followed by sentence, takes the effect of a jury's verdict. That is to say, there can be no re-examination of fact.”

“‘No re-examination of fact!'” snorted Crisp. “That's a bit of law I shall never understand!”

“There are other bits, old man, if you don't think me rude,” laughed his friend. “Don't cut my birthday party next Thursday, or you'll never get any more help from me.”

Crisp strode gloomily out of the building. On the steps he stopped.

“Benscombe! Nip back inside and see if you can scrounge a pair of handcuffs from one of those warders. Sign for it and pledge your word and mine that he shall have them back this afternoon. I'll wait for you in the car.”

Within five minutes, Benscombe rejoined the Chief.

“I got 'em from Hendricks,” he explained. “They don't expect any trouble from Ralph.”

After removing a number of articles to make room, Crisp stowed the handcuffs in his hip pocket.

“Dump me at Watlington Lodge—I'll get a taxi back,” he ordered. “I got it from Bessie that Querk is going back there.”

Arrived at the Lodge, Crisp learned that Querk had not yet returned. He found this out by walking through the open front door to the kitchen and asking the cook. In turn she asked when the servants would be paid their board wages and from whom they were supposed to take orders. Was she herself standing, if he would pardon the question, upon her head or her heels? The house had acquired a quality of ownerlessness.

He drifted into the dining-room, idly surveyed the window by which Ralph was deemed to have entered the house around five twenty-eight. The window had told them nothing. The long spell of fine weather had made the soil hard and dusty. If there had been a heavy shower on Saturday morning, he reflected, Ralph Cornboise might not have been where in fact he was.

Behind him the door was opened. He turned and faced Fenchurch. Claudia was behind him.

“Hullo!” said Fenchurch amiably. “We're looking for Querk.”

“So am I.”

They both came into the room. Crisp felt himself shrinking from Claudia's presence. If she had made any parade of grief, he would have had the satisfaction of telling himself that she was humbugging. She was self-possessed as ever, looking slightly pre-occupied, as if with troublesome business. That she should be in Fenchurch's company at such a time was outrageous.

“If Colonel Crisp wants to see Querk officially, Arthur,” said Claudia, “we'd better wait elsewhere.”

“He can't want to see him officially. It's all over, isn't it, Colonel?”

“Not altogether!” said Crisp. He felt an overpowering desire to shatter the composure of these two. “I think you may—
both
—be interested to know that I have had an illuminating conversation with Tarranio.”

“Good Lord, have you!” Fenchurch made no attempt to conceal his dismay. “What a fool I was to show you that envelope with his London address on it!”

“You were!” agreed Crisp.

“I say, when you saw Tarranio—”