The Attic Murder, S. Fowler Wright [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

the daughter of the late Brigadier-General Seton-Farrimer. She had met Peter Musgrave at Kirkoswald, and married him last July.

She confirmed what he had said concerning her visits to No. 11 Vincent Street.

She did not know that he used the name of Entwistle. She knew nothing of his occupations or manner of life, except that he could paint pictures. She had trusted him absolutely? Yes, of course. Her tone implied that anyone would.

He had been with her on the night of the 4th-5th. There was no possible doubt of that, as it was on the 4th that she had arrived.

“Oh,” she said, when questioned on that point, “I was to show this!” She produced the remaining half of a return ticket to Bath, stamped with that date. Her aunt, she explained, was staying at Bath for her health.

She was either telling the simple truth, or was an actress of exceptional merit. It seemed more probable that she was a born fool.

Mr. Dunkover asked no questions, but let her go.

She was followed by two brothers, who gave their names as Edward and Lionel Timmins. They were young men of amiable manners and apparent honesty. Edward was a metal engraver, Lionel a compositor. They said that they had known Mr. Entwistle since they had attended classes at which he taught in a Technical School, some years before. He had shown a kindly interest in their future welfare, and had got Edward his present job.

They had opened their skylight window to let him in at about midnight on the night of the 4th, to which point their evidence was identical. It was true that only Edward had seen him leave at about five-thirty on the following morning, but this difference rather increased than diminished the value of their testimony, by the impression of veracity which it gave.

Mr. Dunkover, making a hopeless effort, suggested that they might have been mistaken about the date, and they gave confirmatory particulars which left their evidence even more firmly established than it had been previously.

Mr. Huddleston, rising confidently, asked for the discharge of his client, “for whose arrest,” he said boldly, “I suggest that the police never had any reasonably sufficient ground.”

Mr. Garrison asked Mr. Dunkover what he had to say in opposition to that application.

Mr. Dunkover, seeing no remaining possibility but to conduct a dignified retreat with such of the honours of war as might still be his, made a short and forcible speech, in which he dwelt upon the strength of Miss Weston’s evidence, and the confirmation it received from that of John Bigland, who had heard her steps — and no others — descending during the night.

It was, he argued, beyond reasonable doubt that she had followed the murderer to Peter Entwistle’s window, and seen him enter. Was it not the natural presumption that the man was the occupant of the rooms to which he retreated after the crime was committed? If he were a stranger, how did he know that he could find an asylum there? Did he know that Peter was absent? Had he his permission to use his rooms?

He reminded the magistrate that, according to Miss Weston’s testimony, it was not the first time that a man had visited William Rabone during the night, and retired through Peter Entwistle’s window.

If it were not Peter himself, then it was reasonably certain that Peter must know who it was. Why did he not assist the police? Would he be likely to keep silent, and risk conviction, to protect another man — and one who had been guilty of a murder which must be repellent to all decent minds?

Then there was the fact that Peter was a left-handed man. Surely a most unlikely coincidence that he and the murderer who made midnight use of his rooms should both have this somewhat unusual peculiarity!

Finally, there was the fact that he had gone into hiding when he became suspicious that his movements were under the observation of the police. Was that the act of an innocent man, who, as he had sworn, had no idea that he could be held to have had any connection with the crime? And what, except a knowledge of his own guilt, could have been the force which had drawn him to that court when another man had stood in the dock, charged with the same offence?

It was a rearguard action, in which he was not discredited. But it was common realization among the legal gentlemen who surrounded him that his cause was lost.

Mr. Garrison, silently reviewing the evidence of the police witnesses, who had been so much less numerous than their names (he had thought of a good joke on that, which he had restrained with difficulty, but he made it a rule — in which he showed better manners than some High Court judges — that he would never jest when a prisoner stood before him on the capital charge), observed that there was only that of Miss Weston, supported in one detail by John Bigland, which threw direct suspicion upon the accused, and she was unable to identify the man she had followed.

As it stood, it was a case of suspicion rather than proof, and with the alibi in the other scale — ! He could not commit a prisoner for trial with the certainty in his own mind that no jury would convict. He said: “I have decided that the evidence is not sufficient to justify a committal. The prisoner will be discharged.”

He saw the three heads of Mr. Huddleston, K.C., Mr. Augustus Pippin, and Mr. Richard Middleton, junior, very closely together. He overheard words from which he judged correctly that they were debating whether they should have the temerity to ask for costs against the police. He saved them the trouble of further words by saying: “I should add that it was a case in which I consider the police were fully justified in the arrest they made. I am satisfied that Peter Entwistle could assist the police, if he were of a mind to do so, and that the position in which he found himself was the result of his own conduct, which was not such as should be expected from a good citizen, or an entirely innocent man.”

Inspector Combridge must take what comfort he could from this magisterial exculpation. It did not alter the fact that he had put two men successively into the dock, and that the murderer was still unfound.

Could it be possible that Miss Weston’s tale, if it were not entirely concocted, yet withheld some essential facts, perhaps out of sympathy with the murderer, even if she had not shared or connived in the crime?

As he sat in court during that last hour in which he had seen beyond doubt how the case would end, he had gone minutely over Francis Hammerton’s evidence, to observe, from that angle, how far it corroborated her own, and at what point he must regard her account of the night’s events as being unsupported by any independent testimony.

Might she not have committed the crime herself, urged by the hatred which she had no care to conceal, and seeing Rabone to be contemptuous of being caught in the meshes of the criminal law, as she had hoped that, by her instrumentality, he was destined to be?

Her account of the offer he had made to her that evening, the long discussion that followed, her pretence of agreement, the quarrel on the upper floor — all of them might be no more than inventions of her own mind. Only one man could have denied her tale, and he was dead, by whatever hand.

It might be accepted as facts that, at some time before the murder, she had lain down on her bed, but had not taken off her clothes, and that she had left her room by the window within a few minutes of Rabone’s death.

But why should he not have died by her own hand, and she fled, to gain the street by means of the other house, and then appear next day with this plausible, invented tale?

Might she not have known that Entwistle would be away, and that she could enter No. 11, and descend into the street, with little fear that anyone would obstruct her way?

Bigland’s testimony, so far as it went, was consistent with such an interpretation of the crime. A woman’s feet — and no more.

What was there against it?

In the first place, the murder appeared lo be the work of a tall, left-handed man. (How exactly Entwistle fitted that part! How exasperating that alibi was!) In the second, the windows in both rooms had been open.

That was a smaller point, but it supported the first, and inclined him to think that the crime was the work of another hand, though she might have stood by, or assisted the murderer to escape unseen.

He decided that she knew more than she had disclosed, and that a talk with Mr. Banks would be useful. And, better still, there was Sir Reginald Crowe. Perhaps their combined influences might persuade her to a fuller frankness.

As he left the court with these thoughts in his mind, alternating with visions of himself reduced, for incompetence, to the ignominy of a uniformed beat, he observed Francis Hammerton in the corridor. Francis, who had been waiting for him, came up to ask: “I wonder whether you would do me a favour for a few hours?”

“Hadn’t you got something to tell me when I saw you this morning?”

“No. I said I hoped to have something tomorrow.”

“About Rabone, or your own case?”

“I don’t know yet. It may be nothing. It’s just a chance. I want to ask you to promise me that I shan’t be followed about tonight.”

“You mean you’ve heard from Miss Garten?”

“I didn’t say so. I only say I don’t want to be followed about tonight, as I know I am; and if you’ll do that for me, I’ll find out anything I can about the Rabone murder.”

Inspector Combridge may be excused some hesitation in his reply.

“I don’t know,” he said, “whether you’ve thought that you may be safer wherever you’re meaning to go I’m not asking you where it is — if one of our men has you in sight?”

“I’ll risk that. I’ve got so much at stake that — - “

“Yes. I suppose you have. Well, it’s a deal. I’ll trust you not to let Sir Reginald down. You know you mean two thousand to him.”

“You’ll see me at Scotland Yard at ten-thirty tomorrow morning, if I’m alive.”

“Very well. I’ll call Beddoes off.”

He watched Francis as he disappeared rapidly up Alderman Street. “I wonder,” he asked himself, “whether I’m being a bigger fool than before?” Suppose they had all been in it together? He imagined a little supper of celebration. Peter Entwistle in the chair, with Mary Weston and Francis on either hand, and perhaps the two Timmins brothers farther away, and the tearful Jean at the foot of the table. Obviously Francis would not wish the police to observe him on such an occasion!

“I wonder,” he thought again, “whether it’s just ordinary imbecility that’s got me, or premature senile decay?”