The Hampstead Mystery, John R. Watson [best ereader for academics txt] 📗

of whisky out of the decanter. Then he said in a whisper: 'Sir Horace Fewbanks has been murdered!' 'Murdered!' cried Hill, leaping up from his chair—he can act well, I can tell you—'My God, Fred, you don't mean it!' 'He's dead, I tell you,' replied Fred fiercely. I thought, and at the time I suppose Hill thought, that Fred had shot him either accidentally or in order to escape capture. He seemed to guess what we were thinking, for he swore that he had had nothing to do with it—Sir Horace was dead on the floor when he got there.

"He told us all that had happened. When he got to Riversbrook he found lights burning on the ground floor. He jumped over the fence at the side and hid in the garden. He was there only a few minutes when he saw the lights go out. Then the front door was slammed and a woman walked down the garden path to the gate."

"A woman!" exclaimed Kemp.

"Yes, a woman. Why not? She had been to see Sir Horace. One of his
Society mistresses. I'll bet it was on her account that he came back from
Scotland."

"What time was this?" he asked with interest.

"About half-past ten," replied the girl.

"And this woman—this lady—turned out the lights and closed the front door?"

"So Fred says. Of course he thought Sir Horace had done it, but he found out later that Sir Horace was dead."

"I can't understand it," said Kemp. "What was she doing there? If she found the man dead, why didn't she inform the police? No, wait a minute! She'd be afraid to do that if she was a Society woman."

"It might be her who killed him," said the girl.

"Does Fred think that?" asked Kemp, looking at her closely.

"Fred doesn't know what to think," she replied. "But it must have been this woman or Hill who killed him. I feel sure myself that it was Hill."

"This woman puzzles me," said Kemp thoughtfully. "She must have been a cool hand if she went round turning out the lights after finding his dead body. About half-past ten, you said?"

"That is as near as Fred can make it."

"Go on with your story," he said. "I'm interested in this. You were saying that Fred saw the lights go out, and then this woman came out of the house and walked away."

"Well, Fred got into the house through one of the windows at the side—the one Hill had told him to try," continued the girl. "But first of all he waited about half an hour in the garden, so as to give Sir Horace time to go to sleep. He was able to find his way about the house as Hill had given him a plan. He felt his way upstairs and finding a door open he went into the room and flashed his electric torch. By its light he saw Sir Horace Fewbanks lying huddled up in a corner with a big pool of blood beside him on the floor. He felt him to see if he was dead. The body was quite warm, but it was limp. Sir Horace was dead. Fred says he lost his nerve and ran for it as hard as he could. He rushed down stairs and out of the house and got back to the flat as fast as he could.

"The three of us sat there shaking with fear and wondering what to do. Hill was the first to recover himself. In his cunning plausible way, he pointed out that it was altogether unlikely that suspicion would fall on Fred or him. All we had to do was to keep quiet and say nothing; then we'd have no awkward questions put to us. It was his suggestion that we should send an anonymous letter to Scotland Yard telling them Sir Horace had been murdered. That would be much better, he said, than leaving the body there until he went over and found it when he had to go over to Riversbrook to take a look round, in accordance with the instructions that had been given him when Sir Horace went to Scotland. Knowing what he did, he was afraid that if he was allowed to discover the body and inform the police, he would let something slip when the police came at him with their hundreds of questions. We printed the letter to Scotland Yard, each one doing a letter at a time. Hill took it with him, saying he would post it on his way home.

"When he left, Fred and I sat there thinking. Suddenly it came to me as clear as daylight that Hill had committed the murder, and had fixed up things so as to throw suspicion on Fred. He must have known Sir Horace was coming back from Scotland that night, and he had laid in wait for him and shot him. Then he had come over to my flat in order to persuade Fred to carry out the burglary, and direct suspicion to Fred for the murder, if the police worried him. I told Fred what I thought, but he only laughed at me and said I was talking nonsense. But I was right, for a week afterwards the police came and arrested Fred at the flat."

"How did they get him?" asked Kemp.

"I saw them coming along the street from the window, and I pointed them out to Fred. He tried to get away through the kitchen window along the ledge and down the spouting. He almost got away, but one of the detectives saw him before he reached the ground, and they dashed down stairs and got him in the street. Next day I saw in the papers that Hill had made an important statement to the police, and this had led to Fred's arrest. Hill is the murderer, Kincher. The cunning, wicked, treacherous villain told the police about Fred being up there. He wants to see Fred hang in order to save his own neck." The girl's voice rose to a shriek, and she sprang to her feet with blazing eyes. "Kincher," she cried, "you've got to help me put the rope round this wretch's neck. Do you hear me?"

Kemp's impassivity was in marked contrast to the girl's hysterical excitement.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Fred wants you to get up an alibi for him. He sent me over to ask you to arrange it without delay. He wants you and two or three others to swear that he was over here on the night of the murder. That will be sufficient to get him off."

"Not me," said Kemp, shaking his head decidedly. "I won't do it; it's too risky. The police have too many things against me for my word to be any good as a witness. I'd only be landing myself in trouble for perjury instead of helping Fred out of trouble. He ought to have got an alibi ready before he was arrested. I told him at the inquest that he ought to look after it, and he swore he'd not been up there on the night of the murder. It is too late to do anything in the alibi line now. I don't know anybody I could get to come forward and swear Fred was in their company that night—there is a difference between fixing up a tale for the police before a man's arrested, and going into the witness box and committing perjury on oath."

He spoke in such an uncompromising tone that the girl saw it was useless to pursue the matter further.

"Suppose I went to the police and told them that Hill is the murderer?" she suggested.

Kemp shook his head slowly.

"There is only your word for it that Hill killed him," he said. "It doesn't look to me as if he did, when he went over to your flat and told Fred that Sir Horace had come back from Scotland. If he had killed him he would have let Fred go over without saying a word about it."

"That was part of his cunning," said the girl. "If he had said nothing about Sir Horace's return, Fred would have suspected him when he found the dead body. I'm as certain that Hill committed the murder as if I had seen him do it with my own eyes."

Kemp shrugged his shoulders as though realising the uselessness of attempting to combat such a feminine form of reasoning.

"Didn't Fred say that the body was warm when he touched it?" he asked.

She meditated a moment over this evidence of Hill's innocence.

"Well, if Hill didn't kill him, the woman Fred saw leaving the house must have done so," she declared.

"There is something in that," said Kemp. "Look here, we've got to get Fred a good lawyer to defend him, and we must be guided by his advice as to what is the best thing to do. He knows more about what will go down with a jury than you do."

"I paid a solicitor to defend him at the police court," said the girl, "but the money I gave him was thrown away. He said nothing and did nothing."

"That shows he is a man who knows his business," replied Kemp. "What's the good of talking to police court beaks in a case that is bound to go to trial? It's a waste of breath. The thing is to see that Fred is properly defended when the case comes on at the Old Bailey. We want somebody who can manage the jury. I should say Holymead is the man if you can get him. I don't know as he'd be likely to take up the case, for he don't go in much for criminal courts—and yet it seems to me that he might. You ought to try to get him, at least. He used to be a friend of your friend Sir Horace, so if he took up the case it would look as if he believed Fred had nothing to do with the murder. It would be bound to make a good impression on the jury."

"Wouldn't he be very expensive?" asked the girl.

"Not so expensive as getting hanged," said Kemp grimly. "You take my advice and have him if you can get him. Never mind what he costs, if you can raise the money. You've got some money saved up, haven't you?"

"Yes, I've nearly £200. Sir Horace put £100 in the Savings Bank for me on my last birthday. And the furniture at the flat is mine. I'd sell that and everything I've got, for Fred's sake."

"That is the way to talk," said Kemp. "You go to this solicitor you had at the police court, and tell him you want Holymead to defend Fred. Tell him he must brief Holymead—have nobody else but Holymead. Tell him that Holymead was a friend of Sir Horace Fewbanks's and that if he appears for Fred the jury will never believe that Fred had anything to do with the murder. And I don't think he had, though he did lie to me and swear he hadn't been up there that night," he added after a moment's reflection.

CHAPTER XIV

"There is one link in the chain missing," said Rolfe, who was discussing with Inspector Chippenfield, in the latter's room at Scotland Yard, the strength of the case against Birchill.

"And what is that?" asked his superior.

"The piece of woman's handkerchief that I found in the dead man's hand.
You remember we agreed that it showed there was a woman in the case."

"Well, what do you call this girl Fanning? Isn't she in the case? Surely, you don't want any better explanation of the murder than a quarrel between her and Sir Horace over this man Birchill?"

"Yes, I see that plain enough," replied Rolfe. "There is ample motive for the crime, but how that piece of handkerchief got into the dead man's hand is still a mystery to me. It would be easily explained if this girl was present in the room or the house when the murder was committed. But she wasn't. Hill's story is that she was at the flat with him."

"When you have had as much experience in investigating crime as I have, you won't worry over little points that at first don't seem to fit in with what we know to be facts," responded the inspector in a patronising tone. "I noticed from the first, Rolfe, that you were inclined to make too much of this