Midwinter Murder Read online

  ‘Almost certainly, I should say. But think of the great joints that were roasted in it—sirloins of beef and saddles of mutton. Colossal copper preserving pans full of homemade strawberry jam with pounds and pounds of sugar going into it. What a lovely, comfortable age the Victorian age was. Look at the furniture upstairs, large and solid and rather ornate—but, oh!—the heavenly comfort of it, with lots of room for the clothes one used to have, and every drawer sliding in and out so easily. Do you remember that smart modern flat we were lent? Everything built in and sliding—only nothing slid—it always stuck. And the doors pushed shut—only they never stayed shut, or if they did shut they wouldn’t open.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the worst of gadgets. If they don’t go right, you’re sunk.’

  ‘Well, come on, let’s hear the news.’

  The news consisted mainly of grim warnings about the weather, the usual deadlock in foreign affairs, spirited bickerings in Parliament, and a murder in Culver Street, Paddington.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Molly, switching it off. ‘Nothing but misery. I’m not going to hear appeals for fuel economy all over again. What do they expect you to do, sit and freeze? I don’t think we ought to have tried to start a guesthouse in the winter. We ought to have waited until the spring.’ She added in a different tone of voice, ‘I wonder what the woman was like who was murdered.’

  ‘Mrs Lyon?’

  ‘Was that her name? I wonder who wanted to murder her and why.’

  ‘Perhaps she had a fortune under the floorboards.’

  ‘When it says the police are anxious to interview a man ‘seen in the vicinity’ does that mean he’s the murderer?’

  ‘I think it’s usually that. Just a polite way of putting it.’

  The shrill note of a bell made them both jump.

  ‘That’s the front door,’ said Giles. ‘Enter—a murderer,’ he added facetiously.

  ‘It would be, of course, in a play. Hurry up. It must be Mr Wren. Now we shall see who’s right about him, you or me.’

  Mr Wren and a flurry of snow came in together with a rush. All that Molly, standing in the library door, could see of the newcomer was his silhouette against the white world outside.

  How alike, thought Molly, were all men in their livery of civilization. Dark overcoat, gray hat, muffler round the neck.

  In another moment Giles had shut the front door against the elements, Mr Wren was unwinding his muffler and casting down his suitcase and flinging off his hat—all, it seemed, at the same time, and also talking. He had a high-pitched, almost querulous voice and stood revealed in the light of the hall as a young man with a shock of light, sunburned hair and pale, restless eyes.

  ‘Too, too frightful,’ he was saying. ‘The English winter at its worst—a reversion to Dickens—Scrooge and Tiny Tim and all that. One had to be so terribly hearty to stand up to it all. Don’t you think so? And I’ve had a terrible cross-country journey from Wales. Are you Mrs Davis? But how delightful!’ Molly’s hand was seized in a quick, bony clasp. ‘Not at all as I’d imagined you. I’d pictured you, you know, as an Indian army general’s widow. Terrifically grim and memsahibish—and Benares whatnot—a real Victorian whatnot. Heavenly, simply heavenly—Have you got any wax flowers? Or birds of paradise? Oh, but I’m simply going to love this place. I was afraid, you know, it would be very Olde Worlde—very, very Manor House—failing the Benares brass, I mean. Instead, it’s marvelous—real Victorian bedrock respectability. Tell me, have you got one of those beautiful sideboards—mahogany—purple-plummy mahogany with great carved fruits?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Molly, rather breathless under this torrent of words, ‘we have.’

  ‘No! Can I see it? At once. In here?’

  His quickness was almost disconcerting. He had turned the handle of the dining-room door, and clicked on the light. Molly followed him in, conscious of Giles’s disapproving profile on her left.

  Mr Wren passed his long bony fingers over the rich carving of the massive sideboard with little cries of appreciation. Then he turned a reproachful glance upon his hostess.

  ‘No big mahogany dining table? All these little tables dotted about instead?’

  ‘We thought people would prefer it that way,’ said Molly.

  ‘Darling, of course you’re quite right. I was being carried away by my feeling for period. Of course, if you had the table, you’d have to have the right family round it. Stern, handsome father with a beard—prolific, faded mother, eleven children, a grim governess, and somebody called “poor Harriet”—the poor relation who acts as general helper and is very, very grateful for being given a good home. Look at that grate—think of the flames leaping up the chimney and blistering poor Harriet’s back.’

  ‘I’ll take your suitcase upstairs,’ said Giles. ‘East room?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Molly.

  Mr Wren skipped out into the hall again as Giles went upstairs.

  ‘Has it got a four-poster with little chintz roses?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it hasn’t,’ said Giles and disappeared round the bend of the staircase.

  ‘I don’t believe your husband is going to like me,’ said Mr Wren. ‘What’s he been in? The navy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so. They’re much less tolerant than the army and the air force. How long have you been married? Are you very much in love with him?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to come up and see your room.’

  ‘Yes, of course that was impertinent. But I did really want to know. I mean, it’s interesting, don’t you think, to know all about people? What they feel and think, I mean, not just who they are and what they do.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Molly in a demure voice, ‘you are Mr Wren?’

  The young man stopped short, clutched his hair in both hands and tugged at it.

  ‘But how frightful—I never put first things first. Yes, I’m Christopher Wren—now, don’t laugh. My parents were a romantic couple. They hoped I’d be an architect. So they thought it a splendid idea to christen me Christopher—halfway home, as it were.’

  ‘And are you an architect?’ asked Molly, unable to help smiling.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Mr Wren triumphantly. ‘At least I’m nearly one. I’m not fully qualified yet. But it’s really a remarkable example of wishful thinking coming off for once. Mind you, actually the name will be a handicap. I shall never be the Christopher Wren. However, Chris Wren’s Pre-Fab Nests may achieve fame.’

  Giles came down the stairs again, and Molly said, ‘I’ll show you your room now, Mr Wren.’

  When she came down a few minutes later, Giles said, ‘Well, did he like the pretty oak furniture?’

  ‘He was very anxious to have a four-poster, so I gave him the rose room instead.’

  Giles grunted and murmured something that ended, ‘. . . young twerp.’

  ‘Now, look here, Giles,’ Molly assumed a severe demeanor. ‘This isn’t a house party of guests we’re entertaining. This is business. Whether you like Christopher Wren or not—’

  ‘I don’t,’ Giles interjected.

  ‘—has nothing whatever to do with it. He’s paying seven guineas a week, and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘If he pays it, yes.’

  ‘He’s agreed to pay it. We’ve got his letter.’

  ‘Did you transfer that suitcase of his to the rose room?’

  ‘He carried it, of course.’

  ‘Very gallant. But it wouldn’t have strained you. There’s certainly no question of stones wrapped up in newspaper. It’s so light that there seems to me there’s probably nothing in it.’

  ‘Ssh, here he comes,’ said Molly warningly.

  Christopher Wren was conducted to the library which looked, Molly thought, very nice, indeed, with its big chairs and its log fire. Dinner, she told him, would be in half an hour’s time. In reply to a question, she explained that there were no other guests at the moment. In that case, Christopher said, how would it be if he came into
the kitchen and helped?

  ‘I can cook you an omelette if you like,’ he said engagingly.

  The subsequent proceedings took place in the kitchen, and Christopher helped with the washing up.

  Somehow, Molly felt, it was not quite the right start for a conventional guesthouse—and Giles had not liked it at all. Oh, well, thought Molly, as she fell asleep, tomorrow when the others came it would be different.

  The morning came with dark skies and snow. Giles looked grave, and Molly’s heart fell. The weather was going to make everything very difficult.

  Mrs Boyle arrived in the local taxi with chains on the wheels, and the driver brought pessimistic reports of the state of the road.

  ‘Drifts afore nightfall,’ he prophesied.

  Mrs Boyle herself did not lighten the prevailing gloom. She was a large, forbidding-looking woman with a resonant voice and a masterful manner. Her natural aggressiveness had been heightened by a war career of persistent and militant usefulness.

  ‘If I had not believed this was a running concern, I should never have come,’ she said. ‘I naturally thought it was a well-established guesthouse, properly run on scientific lines.’

  ‘There is no obligation for you to remain if you are not satisfied, Mrs Boyle,’ said Giles.

  ‘No, indeed, and I shall not think of doing so.’

  ‘Perhaps, Mrs Boyle,’ said Giles, ‘you would like to ring up for a taxi. The roads are not yet blocked. If there has been any misapprehension it would, perhaps, be better if you went elsewhere.’ He added, ‘We have had so many applications for rooms that we shall be able to fill your place quite easily—indeed, in future we are charging a higher rate for our rooms.’

  Mrs Boyle threw him a sharp glance. ‘I am certainly not going to leave before I have tried what the place is like. Perhaps you would let me have a rather large bath towel, Mrs Davis. I am not accustomed to drying myself on a pocket handkerchief.’

  Giles grinned at Molly behind Mrs Boyle’s retreating back.

  ‘Darling, you were wonderful,’ said Molly. ‘The way you stood up to her.’

  ‘Bullies soon climb down when they get their own medicine,’ said Giles.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Molly. ‘I wonder how she’ll get on with Christopher Wren.’

  ‘She won’t,’ said Giles.

  And, indeed, that very afternoon, Mrs Boyle remarked to Molly, ‘That’s a very peculiar young man,’ with distinct disfavour in her voice.

  The baker arrived looking like an Arctic explorer and delivered the bread with the warning that his next call, due in two days’ time, might not materialize.

  ‘Holdups everywhere,’ he announced. ‘Got plenty of stores in, I hope?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Molly. ‘We’ve got lots of tins. I’d better take extra flour, though.’

  She thought vaguely that there was something the Irish made called soda bread. If the worst came to the worst she could probably make that.

  The baker had also brought the papers, and she spread them out on the hall table. Foreign affairs had receded in importance. The weather and the murder of Mrs Lyon occupied the front page.

  She was staring at the blurred reproduction of the dead woman’s features when Christopher Wren’s voice behind her said, ‘Rather a sordid murder, don’t you think? Such a drab-looking woman and such a drab street. One can’t feel, can one, that there is any story behind it?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt,’ said Mrs Boyle with a snort, ‘that the creature got no more than she deserved.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mr Wren turned to her with engaging eagerness. ‘So you think it’s definitely a sex crime, do you?’

  ‘I suggested nothing of the kind, Mr Wren.’

  ‘But she was strangled, wasn’t she? I wonder—’ he held out his long white hands—‘what it would feel like to strangle anyone.’

  ‘Really, Mr Wren!’

  Christopher moved nearer to her, lowering his voice. ‘Have you considered, Mrs Boyle, just what it would feel like to be strangled?’

  Mrs Boyle said again, even more indignantly, ‘Really, Mr Wren!’

  Molly read hurriedly out, “The man the police are anxious to interview was wearing a dark overcoat and a light Homburg hat, was of medium height, and wore a woolen scarf.”’

  ‘In fact,’ said Christopher Wren, ‘he looked just like everybody else.’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Molly. ‘Just like everybody else.’

  In his room at Scotland Yard, Inspector Parminter said to Detective Sergeant Kane, ‘I’ll see those two workmen now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Decent class workingmen. Rather slow reactions. Dependable.’

  ‘Right.’ Inspector Parminter nodded.

  Presently two embarrassed-looking men in their best clothes were shown into his room. Parminter summed them up with a quick eye. He was an adept at setting people at their ease.

  ‘So you think you’ve some information that might be useful to us on the Lyon case,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come along. Sit down. Smoke?’

  He waited while they accepted cigarettes and lit up.

  ‘Pretty awful weather outside.’

  ‘It is that, sir.’

  ‘Well, now, then—let’s have it.’

  The two men looked at each other, embarrassed now that it came to the difficulties of narration.

  ‘Go ahead, Joe,’ said the bigger of the two.

  Joe went ahead. ‘It was like this, see. We ’adn’t got a match.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Jarman Street—we was working on the road there—gas mains.’

  Inspector Parminter nodded. Later he would get down to exact details of time and place. Jarman Street, he knew was in the close vicinity of Culver Street where the tragedy had taken place.

  ‘You hadn’t got a match,’ he repeated encouragingly.

  ‘No. Finished my box, I ’ad, and Bill’s lighter wouldn’t work, and so I spoke to a bloke as was passing. ‘Can you give us a match, mister?’ I says. Didn’t think nothing particular, I didn’t, not then. He was just passing—like lots of others—I just ’appened to arsk ’im.’

  Again Parminter nodded.

  ‘Well, he give us a match, ’e did. Didn’t say nothing. “Cruel cold,” Bill said to ’im, and he just answered, whispering-like, “Yes, it is.” Got a cold on his chest, I thought. He was all wrapped up, anyway. “Thanks mister,” I says and gives him back his matches, and he moves off quick, so quick that when I sees ’e’d dropped something, it’s almost too late to call ’im back. It was a little notebook as he must ’ave pulled out of ’is pocket when he got the matches out. “Hi, mister,” I calls after ’im, “you’ve dropped something.” But he didn’t seem to hear—he just quickens up and bolts round the corner, didn’t ’e, Bill?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Bill. ‘Like a scurrying rabbit.’

  ‘Into the Harrow Road, that was, and it didn’t seem as we’d catch up with him there, not the rate ’e was going, and, anyway, by then it was a bit late—it was only a little book, not a wallet or anything like that—maybe it wasn’t important. “Funny bloke,” I says. “His hat pulled down over his eyes, and all buttoned up—like a crook on the pictures,” I says to Bill, didn’t I, Bill?’

  ‘That’s what you said,’ agreed Bill.

  ‘Funny I should have said that, not that I thought anything at the time. Just in a hurry to get home, that’s what I thought, and I didn’t blame ’im. Not ’arf cold, it was!’

  ‘Not ’arf,’ agreed Bill.

  ‘So I says to Bill, “Let’s ’ave a look at this little book and see if it’s important.” Well, sir, I took a look. “Only a couple of addresses,” I says to Bill. Seventy-Four Culver Street and some blinking manor ’ouse.’

  ‘Ritzy,’ said Bill with a snort of disapproval.

  Joe continued his tale with a certain gusto now that he had got wound up.

  ‘“Seventy-Four Culver Street,�
� I says to Bill. “That’s just round the corner from ’ere. When we knock off, we’ll take it round”—and then I sees something written across the top of the page. “What’s this?” I says to Bill. And he takes it and reads it out. ‘“Three blind mice”—must be off ’is knocker,’ he says—and just at that very moment—yes, it was that very moment, sir, we ’ears some woman yelling, “Murder!” a couple of streets away!’

  Joe paused at this artistic climax.

  ‘Didn’t half yell, did she?’ he resumed. “Here,” I says to Bill, “you nip along.” And by and by he comes back and says there’s a big crowd and the police are there and some woman’s had her throat cut or been strangled and that was the landlady who found her, yelling for the police. “Where was it?” I says to him. “In Culver Street,” he says. “What number?” I asks, and he says he didn’t rightly notice.’

  Bill coughed and shuffled his feet with the sheepish air of one who has not done himself justice.

  ‘So I says, “We’ll nip around and make sure,” and when we finds it’s number seventy-four we talk it over, and “Maybe,” Bill says, “the address in the notebook’s got nothing to do with it,” and I says as maybe it has, and, anyway, after we’ve talked it over and heard the police want to interview a man who left the ’ouse about that time, well, we come along ’ere and ask if we can see the gentleman who’s handling the case, and I’m sure I ’ope as we aren’t wasting your time.’

  ‘You acted very properly,’ said Parminter approvingly. ‘You’ve brought the notebook with you? Thank you. Now—’

  His questions became brisk and professional. He got places, times, dates—the only thing he did not get was a description of the man who had dropped the notebook. Instead he got the same description as he had already got from a hysterical landlady, the description of a hat pulled down over the eyes, a buttoned-up coat, a muffler swathed round the lower part of a face, a voice that was only a whisper, gloved hands.

  When the men had gone he remained staring down at the little book lying open on his table. Presently it would go to the appropriate department to see what evidence, if any, of fingerprints it might reveal. But now his attention was held by the two addresses and by the line of small handwriting along the top of the page.