Case with No Conclusion (7 page)

“You both slept in the same room, then?” queried Beef.

“Yes,” admitted Mrs. Duncan shortly.

“Separate beds?” Beef suggested.

“If you must go into such details, yes,” he was told.

“But you never heard him get up and go out?”

“No. But there'd be nothing unusual in that. He was very restless at night, very restless.”

Beefs voice grew sepulchral. “And where is he now?” he asked the cook.

She seemed the least embarrassed person. “In
the scullery with a sheet over him. The police have seen to him.”

Beef recrossed his legs. “Now I want to ask you a few questions about the past,” he said.

Mrs. Duncan became guarded in her manner. “There's not much I can tell you,” she assured him.

“For instance, what regular visitors was there at the house?”

“Very few, really,” she said. “There was the Reverend Smyke used to come round when he wanted a subscription to something, and Doctor Benson, and of course Mr. Peter, and really I can't remember anyone else who came more than once.”

“What about when old Mr. Ferrers was alive?”

“It was just the same, very few strangers. There was his lawyer, a Mr. Nicholson, and another gentleman like a lawyer that was often in and out, but I think he came to see Mr. Stewart.”

“What was his name?” asked Beef, busy with his notebook.

“Orpen, I think it was,” returned the cook as though she grudged the information.

“Do you remember him?” asked Beef, turning to Peter Ferrers.

“Yes, I remember him quite well. I believe his real name was Oppenstein. I never knew his business.”

“Has he been lately?” Beef asked Mrs. Duncan.

“I think he came once just after old Mr. Ferrers died, but I've never seen him since.”

“Hm. Well, I think that's all I want to know from
you, Mrs. Duncan. Thank you very much. Oh—by the way…”

She turned back from the doorway which she had already reached. “What is it now?” she asked.

“Who ran the housekeeping accounts?”

As far as it was possible for one of that build, she stiffened. “I did,” she said loudly.

“Anyone go over them?”

“I don't know whether Mr. Stewart did or didn't, and it wouldn't have made any difference if he had,” she said in a breath. “I handed my book in at the end of the month and it was all correct. I paid the girls their wages, and Duncan and me ours. Bought all the insurance stamps and had charge of everything. And if there's anything you'd like to call into question…”

“Oh no,” said Beef, “I'm sure it's all down.”

After which it was no wonder that Mrs. Duncan slammed the door as she went out.

Beef turned to Peter Ferrers. “Can't hardly wonder at the old chap hanging himself when he'd got tied up to that, can you?” he said. Then, seeming to recollect that for Peter it was not a facetious matter of following clues and being entertained, but a tragedy in which two old friends had already lost their lives, and his brother was being held for murder, he added vaguely, “All the same, I'm sorry about it.”

Peter nodded. “Yes, she is rather much, isn't she?” he said. “Still, she's a good cook.”

“Did the police say they'd be back?” asked Beef.

Peter glanced at his wrist-watch. “Yes, at about midday, they said.”

“Who was in charge?” asked Beef inquisitively.

“There was an Inspector Stute.”

Beef slapped his thigh with a large hand. “Cor, ole Stute,” he grinned. “I wonder what he'll say when he finds me down here. I'm afraid he never thought much of me, didn't Stute. He was always on about his modern methods and that, and didn't like the way I went straight to the heart of a thing.”

I looked at Beef with some concern. In the old days he had at least the grace to be modest about himself when he was in contact with more intelligent detectives. But his having set up as a private investigator seemed to have turned his head. Even at this minute his professional air was very obvious as he asked Peter where the nearest telephone was.

The Cypresses was not on the telephone, but there was a call-box apparently a few yards down the road. When Beef and I reached it he insisted rather childishly that I should squeeze myself into the box with him while he made his call. In the restricted space he began to search through the directory.

“Hm,” he said at last, “only three Oppensteins. That's good.”

His big blunt finger seemed to have some difficulty with the work of dialling, but eventually he got through. I listened while, with elephantine attempts at tact, he asked someone at the other end if he knew Mr. Ferrers, and received, I gathered, a
curt negative. Undaunted, he dialled again, and this time got as far as saying, “Oh, you did know him, then?” before the other refused to discuss his business, or so I gathered. Beefs face was lively as he put down the receiver and looked round at me.

“I thought so,” he said, “a moneylender, that's what he was.”

W
HEN
the front-door bell rang, Ferrers remarked quietly that it was probably the police, and he was right. And in a few minutes Inspector Stute was ushered into the room by Rose. I had not seen him since we had met over the Braxham case, and was a little apprehensive about his attitude to Beef. I remembered his dapper appearance, and cool, efficient manner, and I knew that in this case, at all events, he would have little patience with my blundering friend.

However, he nodded with curt friendliness to Beef. “I heard you were here,” he said pleasantly. “You've set up on your own as a detective, then?”

“That's right,” returned Beef, and I felt there was something aggressive in his manner. “And I've just come down here to get this little matter of Mr. Stewart Ferrers cleared up. I already know enough to be sure he ought never to have been arrested.”

Stute nodded, smiling. “That's right, Beef,” he said, “you go ahead.”

“Only,” said Beef, “I think it would save a lot of time and trouble for all parties if you was to tell me on what you base your case against Stewart Ferrers.”

Still Stute remained unruffled. “Oh, you do,” he said. “Well now. Look here. You run along like a
good chap and don't take up our time. I'm pleased to see you again, but really, this sort of thing is too urgent for me to be delayed by anyone.”

Peter Ferrers suddenly stood up. “Well, I think I'll leave you two to discuss the matter between yourselves,” he said. “I have no wish to hear the whole case over again.” And he walked out of the room.

Beef had been sucking gently at the ends of his moustache. Then, “That's not hardly fair, Inspector Stute,” he burst out as soon as Peter Ferrers had left the room. “You know very well what's always done in these cases. You tell me what you know, and I tell you what I know, and we're all Sir Garnet.”

Stute sighed. “Well, very briefly I'll outline to you the case,” he said. “It's so clear that anyone who's even read the newspapers probably understands it. Only, I would ask you, Beef, not to start a lot of discussion afterwards. You really mustn't presume on the luck you had in that other matter to take up time elsewhere. First of all, and most important, Stewart's finger-prints were quite clearly on the handle of the dagger with which Benson was murdered, and no other finger-prints were on it. Then again, Stewart had quarrelled with Benson that evening, as we found out from Duncan, and their quarrel had been a serious one. Stewart was alone in the house with Benson, except for the servants, at the time of the murder. The butler, the cook, and the two housemaids can surely be left out of suspicion for lack of motive, or even capacity.

“Then there is the evidence of the chauffeur-gardener. Stewart most carefully gave him the evening off, but he also cross-examined him on the subject of pre-selection gears, knowing that Benson's car had these. His idea was to drive Benson away in his own car and let him be found, having apparently committed suicide, in some place from which he himself could walk home. Then again, we have a document which you haven't seen yet. I don't really know why I should show it to you, but since it will probably convince you once and for all that you're wasting my time in hanging around here, here it is. This, I may say, was found in Stewart's pocket when he was arrested.”

He pulled out of his pocket a piece of folded paper about eight inches by four, on which had been typewritten these remarkable words:

“
Received of St. Vincent Ferrer, forty seven years of hellish life now to be ended, with a total profit of £500.
”

There was a twopenny stamp below this across which was the signature of Benson.

“Now,” said Stute, “our handwriting experts have made a thorough examination of this document, and they say that the signature is the genuine signature of Benson. What is the inference? It is perfectly obvious. This was a document prepared for Benson to sign under the impression that he was signing a receipt for five hundred pounds, but actually serving as a preadmission of suicide. Having refilled Benson's glass with whisky
a number of times, and having paid him the money, Stewart handed him the receipt to sign, and Benson had no idea that he was signing his own death warrant.

“Stewart's idea, then, had been to put Benson in his own car and drive away to some lonely spot where he would leave him with the dagger in his throat, his hand on the dagger, and the document showing that he intended to commit suicide in his pocket. But this is where the hitch came; the hitch which fortunately always comes to make the detection of murderers possible.
Benson hadn't brought his car.
What was Stewart to do? Either drive him away in his own, and involve himself in a hundred ways; blood on his cushions, the fact that he'd taken his car out at all, and the possibility of his being seen? No, he could not do that. Finally, he decided to leave him there in the chair. After all, nobody had seen him commit the murder, and he didn't see how it could be proved against him.

“But it can. For me it would need no more than a process of elimination to be sure that it was Stewart. It was someone
in
the house. It wasn't one of the servants, and Stewart had both the strength and the motive to do it. But as you have seen, my case doesn't rest on that.”

“Is that your case?” asked Beef.

Again Stute smiled with long-suffering good-humour. “There's a lot more to it,” he said. “I've discovered the motive for one thing—or perhaps even the motives. No one who has been in Sydenham
since this murder happened could possibly be in doubt about one thing—the relationship between Stewart and Mrs. Benson. There was nobody in the place who had not heard stories about it, and it is possible that Benson's murder was no more than the outcome of the eternal triangle.”

“But what about the five hundred pounds?”

“I've been to see Stewart's bank and it appears that he has drawn out altogether four sums of five hundred in single pound notes in the last two years. What could that be but blackmail? When Benson showed himself ready to sign a receipt for five hundred pounds, what, one must ask, was he receiving five hundred pounds for? Scarcely professional services. That, surely, is sufficient, though I daresay we shall find some more details between now and the date of the trial.”

“But, then,” persisted Beef, “if he'd handed that money over to Benson, and got a receipt for it, why wasn't it in Benson's pocket? Or was it?”

“It wasn't,” said Stute, “but it was in Stewart's bedroom. We found it with the faked confession of suicide when we arrested him.”

“There's a couple more questions I'd like to ask,” Beef postulated.

“Certainly,” said Stute.

“Did you find any foot-prints round the drive or in the garden on the morning of the murder?”

Stute laughed aloud. “Come now, Beef,” he said kindly. “You must try to keep up to date, you know. Foot-prints!”

“All right, all right,” said Beef. “Only I know what I'm thinking,” he added mysteriously.

“There's one other little point,” Stute added. “You saw where the dagger was found? In its place on the table. Who would have put it there? Surely only one man. The man who kept it there, who played with it a dozen times a day and always returned it to the same spot. Circumstantial, I know, but very convincing.

“You see,” he said finally, turning to me, “I know the position, Mr Townsend. The police always arrest the wrong man, and then the wonderful private detective comes along and shows them how mistaken they are. I'm sorry, I should have liked to see you.make a good story of this, but this time it's not going your way. I'm afraid there can be no doubt whatever about it. Stewart is guilty, and we shan't have much difficulty in proving it. Next time you want to get the material for a mystery you'll really have to follow the Yard's investigations.”

I sighed. What he had said was only too true.

But Beef was not impressed. “There are one or two 'oles I should like to pick in that,” he said. “For instance, how did he come to be so silly as to have left the knife out on the table? I mean, why didn't he make any show of Benson having committed suicide? He never even had the confession of suicide in his pocket.”

Stute smiled with patronizing ease. “You know, Beef, what's wrong with you is lack of experience. You get your murders out of books, where they're
all brilliantly subtle, and concealed behind extraordinary evidence. Murder in real life is a straightforward business, committed by some blundering fool. Instead of thinking of all the cases in these detective novels that Mr. Townsend believes in, why don't you study a few of those that appear in the papers? You'll find that murderers are not such extremely clever people, and what thinking they do is done later.”