The Silk Stocking Murders

The Coroner was dealing with him as sympathetically as possible, but there were some questions that had to be asked. ‘You have heard that she was in the habit of saying that she was bored stiff with life. Did she say that to you?’

‘Often,’ replied the other, with a wan imitation of a smile. ‘She frequently said things like that. It was her pose. At least,’ he added, so low that Roger could hardly hear, ‘we thought it was her pose.’

‘You were to have been married the month after next—in June?’

‘Yes.’

The Coroner consulted a paper in his hand. ‘Now, on the night in question you went to a theatre, I understand, and afterwards to your club?’

‘That is so.’

‘You therefore did not see Lady Ursula at all that evening?’

‘No.’

‘So you cannot speak as to her state of mind after five o’clock, when you left her after tea?’

‘No. But it was nearer half-past five when I left her.’

‘Quite so. Now you have heard the other witnesses who spent the evening with her. Do you agree that she was in her usual health and spirits when you saw her at tea-time?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘She gave you no indication that anything might be on her mind?’

‘None whatever.’

‘Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr Pleydell. I know how distressing this must be for you. I’ll just ask you finally: can you tell us anything which might shed light on the reason why Lady Ursula should have taken her own life?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ said the other, in the same low, composed voice as that in which he had given all the rest of his evidence; and he added, with unexpected emotion: ‘I wish to God I could!’

‘He does think there’s something funny about it,’ was Roger’s comment to himself, as Pleydell stepped down. ‘Not merely why she should have done such a thing at all, but some of those other little points as well. I wonder—I wonder what Moresby’s here for!’

During the next twenty minutes nothing of importance emerged. The Coroner was evidently trying to make the case as little painful for the Dowager Countess and Pleydell as possible, and since it was apparently so straightforward there was no point in spinning out the proceedings. The jury must have thought the same, for their verdict came pat: ‘Suicide during temporary insanity caused by the unnatural conditions of modern life.’ Which was a kind way of putting ‘Lady Ursula’s life.’

There was first the hush and then the little stir which always succeeds the delivery of a verdict, and the densely packed court began slowly to empty.

Roger saw to it that the emptying process brought him in contact with Moresby. Having already tested the strength of that gentleman’s official reticence, he had not the faintest hope of expecting to crack it on this occasion; but there is never any harm in trying.

‘Well, Mr Sheringham,’ was the Chief Inspector’s genial greeting as they were brought together at last. ‘Well, I haven’t seen you for a long time, sir.’

‘Since last summer, no,’ Roger agreed. ‘And you’ll oblige me by not talking about last summer over the drink we’re now about to consume. Any other summer you like, but not last one.’

The Chief Inspector’s grin widened, but he gave the necessary promise. They walked sedately towards a hostelry of Roger’s choosing; not the nearest, because everybody else would be going there. The Chief Inspector knew perfectly well why he was being invited to have a drink; Roger knew that he knew; the Chief Inspector knew that Roger knew that he knew. It was all very amusing, and both of them were enjoying it.

Both of them knew, too, that it was up to Roger to open the proceedings if they were to be opened. But Roger did nothing of the kind. They drank up their beer, chatting happily about this, about that and about the other, but never about Coroner’s inquests and Chief Detective Inspectors from Scotland Yard at them; they drank up some more beer, provided by Moresby, and then they embarked on yet more beer, provided again by Roger. Both Roger and the Chief Inspector liked beer.

At last Roger fired his broadside. It was a nice, unexpected broadside, and Roger had been meditating it at intervals for three glasses. In the middle of a conversation about sweet-peas and how to grow them, Roger remarked very casually:

‘So you think Lady Ursula was murdered too, do you, Moresby?’

CHAPTER VI (#ulink_5516140e-72cd-5c62-8c74-ff2d8a3c3117)

DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM, OF SCOTLAND YARD (#ulink_5516140e-72cd-5c62-8c74-ff2d8a3c3117)

IT is given to few people in this world to see a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard start violently; yet this was the result which rewarded Roger’s broadside. With intense gratification he watched the Chief Inspectorial countenance shiver visibly, the Chief Inspectorial bulk tauten, and the Chief Inspectorial beer come within an inch of climbing over the side of the glass; and in that moment he felt that the past was avenged.

‘Why, Mr Sheringham, sir,’ said Chief Inspector Moresby, with a poor attempt at bland astonishment, ‘whatever makes you say a thing like that?’

Roger did not reply at once. Now that he had got over the slight numbness that followed the success of his little ruse (he had hoped perhaps to make the Inspectorial eye-lid quiver slightly, but hardly more), he was filled with a genuine astonishment of no less dimensions than that which Moresby was so gallantly attempting to simulate. In attributing Lady Ursula’s death to murder he had not so much been drawing a bow at a venture as deliberately making the wildest assertion he could think of, in order to shock the Inspector into giving away the much more insignificant cause of his presence at the inquest. But, perhaps for the first time in his life, the Chief Inspector had been caught napping and given himself away, horse, foot and artillery. The very fact that he had been on his guard had only contributed to his disaster, for he had been guarding his front and Roger had attacked him in the rear.

In the meantime Roger’s brain, jerking out of the coma into which the Inspector’s start had momentarily plunged it, was making up for lost time. It did not so much think as look swiftly over a rapid series of flashing pictures. And instantly that which had before been a mystery became plain. Roger could have kicked himself that it should have taken a starting Inspector to point out to him the obvious. Murder was the only possible explanation that fitted all those puzzling facts!

‘Whew!’ he said, in some awe.

The Chief Inspector was watching him uneasily. ‘What an extraordinary idea, sir!’ he observed, and laughed hollowly.

Roger drank up the rest of his beer, looked at his watch and grabbed the Chief Inspector’s arm, all in one movement. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Lunch time. You’re lunching with me.’ And without waiting for a reply he began marching out of the place.

The Chief Inspector, for once at a decided disadvantage, was left with no option but to follow him.

Quivering all over, Roger hailed a taxi and gave the man the address of his flat.

‘Where are we going, Mr Sheringham?’ asked the Chief Inspector, whose countenance bore none of the happily expectant look of those about to lunch at another’s expense.

‘To my rooms,’ replied Roger, for once economical of words. ‘We shan’t be overheard there.’

The groan with which the Chief Inspector replied was not overheard either. It was of the spirit. But it was a very substantial spiritual groan.

In an extravagant impulse not many months ago Roger had walked into the Albany, fortified by a visit to his publisher’s and the news of the sales of his latest novel, and demanded rooms there. A set being fortunately vacant at the moment, he had stepped straight into them. Thither he led the helpless Chief Inspector, now gently perspiring all over, thrust him into a chair, mixed him a short drink in spite of his protests in which the word ‘beer’ was prominent, and went off to see about lunch. During the interval between his return and the serving of the meal, he regaled his victim with a vivid account of the coffee-growing business in Brazil, in which he had a young cousin.

‘Anthony Walton, his name is,’ he remarked with nonchalance. ‘I believe you met him once, didn’t you?’

The Chief Inspector had not even the spirit left to forget his earlier promise and retort in kind.

Let it not be thought that Chief Inspector Moresby shows up in an unworthy light in this episode. Roger had him in a cleft stick, and Moresby knew it. When police inquiries are in progress that necessitate the most profound secrecy, the smallest whisper of their existence in the Press may be enough to destroy the patient work of weeks. The Press, which may be bullied on occasions with impunity, must on others be courted by the conscientious Scotland Yard man with more delicate caution than ever lover courted the shyest of mistresses. Roger knew all this only too well, and only too well Chief Inspector Moresby knew that he knew it. But this time the situation was not amusing at all.

In the orthodox manner Roger held up any discussion of the topic at issue until the coffee had been served and the cigarettes were alight, just as big business men always do in the novels that are written about them (in real life they get down to it with the hors d’œuvres and don’t blether about, wasting valuable time). ‘And now,’ said Roger, when that stage had arrived, ‘now, Moresby, my friend, for it!’

‘For it?’ repeated Chief Inspector Moresby, still game.

‘Yes; don’t play with me, Moresby. The boot’s on the other foot now. And what are we going to do about it?’

The Chief Inspector tidily consumed the dregs in his coffee-cup. ‘That,’ he said carefully, ‘depends what we’re talking about, Mr Sheringham.’

‘Very well,’ Roger grinned unkindly. ‘I’ll put it more plainly. Do you want me to write an article for The Courier proving that Lady Ursula must have been murdered—and not only Lady Ursula, but Elsie Benham and Unity Ransome as well? Am I to call on the police to get busy and follow up my lead? It’s an article I’m simply tingling to write, you know.’

‘You are, sir? Why?’