Death of a Peer

“To what?” asked Nigel.

“To the quick drop, Mr. Bathgate,” said Fox.

“Good God, was he the murderer?”

“Yes, yes,” said Alleyn impatiently. “Come on.”

III

Alleyn sent Curtis to look at Lady Wutherwood, and Campbell to the servants’ room where one of the maids could be heard enjoying fits of hysterics. Henry, Roberta, and the nurse were still on the landing. The nurse again expressed her devotion to duty and was told she could report to the doctor. Henry and Roberta were sent upstairs.

“If you can find a room with a heater,” said Alleyn, “I should use it. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“I want to know—” Henry began.

“Of course you do. Give me a little longer, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Alleyn and Fox went down to the green drawing-room, followed by a completely silent Nigel. Alleyn sent the policeman on guard there up to Campbell. He unlocked the door with the key that had been found in Lady Wutherwood’s dressing-gown pocket; The room was heavy with flowers.

The sound of wind and rain was loudest here. Gilded chairs and china cupboards stood at intervals round the walls, which were hung with green silk. Behind those sad folds the wainscoting uttered furtive little noises. A monstrous chandelier chimed dolefully as some one walked along the passage overhead. On three trestles in the middle of the room lay Lord Wutherwood’s body in an open coffin. The face was covered and a sheaf of lilies quite hid the breast. Alleyn moved them away. For a moment they were all silent. Then Nigel took out his handkerchief.

“God,” said Nigel shakily, “this is — it’s a bit too much.”

“Hacked off at the wrist,” said Fox. “Sawn off, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “If you’re going to be sick, Bathgate, I implore you to go outside.”

“I’m all right.”

Alleyn slid his hand out of sight round the sharp outline of the body. After a moment he drew something out of the coffin. Nigel had turned away. He heard Fox’s exclamation and then Alleyn’s level voice: “So the tool, you see, was to be buried with the crime.”

“It’s from the kitchen,” said Fox. “They saw up stock bones with them.”

“Put it away, Fox. Bailey will have to see it. Thompson had better take a shot of the dismembered arm. In the meantime—”

Alleyn replaced the sheaf of lilies and stood for a moment looking at the shrouded figure.

“What sort of epitaph,” he said, “can be written for the late Lord Wutherwood, killed by cupidity and mutilated in the interests of black magic? We’d better finish our job, Fox. We haven’t got a warrant. She’ll have to be taken away and charged later. You attend to that, will you? I’d better see that young man.”

IV

“Robin may stay and listen too, mayn’t she?” asked Henry.

“Certainly. In a sense,” said Alleyn, “Miss Grey is the heroine in this case.”

“I am?” asked Roberta. “How can that be?”

“Your statement last night gave us the first inkling as to Giggle’s activities. You remember that you told us how, when you were alone in the dining-room, you heard the lift. Do you mind repeating that story once more?”

“Of course not. I heard Lord Wutherwood call out the second time. Then I heard the lift go down. Then I took a cigarette. Then I heard the lift again. Coming up. Then I hunted for matches and leant out of the window, smoking and listening to London. Then I heard Lady Wutherwood scream. The screams got louder and louder as…” Roberta stopped and stared at Alleyn. “Now I see,” she said slowly. ‘That’s why you made me repeat it twice over. The lift noises didn’t fit with the screams.”

“That’s it,” said Alleyn. “You see, according to all the other evidence, Lady Wutherwood began screaming while the lift was still going down and all the time it was coming up. But you heard the lift go down and come up with no disturbance. Then you leant out of the window and listened to London so you didn’t hear the lift go down on the second trip. You only heard her scream as it returned.”

“So there was a trip down and up unaccounted for,” said Henry.

“Yes. But the commissionaire said positively that the lift only made one trip and that the fatal one, when your brother stopped it before it actually reached the ground floor but when it was within view of the hall. What of this other trip? The only explanation was that it didn’t go all the way down. Now, when Miss Grey heard the lift, Michael and Giggle had just left her. They both say that Giggle went straight downstairs. Yet Giggle stated that the lift made no movement while he was going downstairs. He swore that it was at the top landing with Lord Wutherwood inside. It is at least true that Lord Wutherwood was inside. But we know it went down and we know Giggle must have seen it. The lift can be summoned from any floor at any time. The flat on that landing below yours is unoccupied. Our theory is that Giggle, on leaving Michael, went down to that landing. Michael saw him go and went into Flat 26. That gave Giggle his dubious alibi. He summoned the lift with Lord Wutherwood inside it. He entered the lift and inflicted the injuries. He was wearing your motoring gloves. He threw them under the seat, got out of the lift and went on down to the ground level where the commissionaire spoke to him. He then walked through the front entrance and got into the car.”

“But why!” Henry said. “Why did he kill him?”

“Because he knew he would come into ?300 a year and a small property.”

“For so little!”

“Not so little to him. And I learnt that the property has increased considerably in value. He would have been comfortably set up for life. But there was another driving factor which we shall come to in a minute or two.”

“One moment,” said Henry. “Did Aunt V. know Giggle was the murderer?”

“We’ll take her next. As your family pointed out with tireless emphasis, Lady Wutherwood is mentally unhinged. May I say in passing that the emphasis was just a little too pointed? They would have been wiser to have left us to form our own opinion. However, she is undoubtedly insane and — a point that you may have missed — she is almost certainly taking some form of drug; morphia, I should think. She has also become deeply interested in witchcraft and black magic. The interest, I think, is pathological. In the police service we see a good deal of the effect of superstition on credulous and highly-strung people. We learn of middle-aged men and women losing their money and their sanity in the squalid little parlours of fortune-tellers, spirit-mongers, and self-styled psychiatrists. Lady Wutherwood, I think, is an extreme example of this sort of thing. She has wooed the supernatural in the grand macabre manner and has paid for her enthusiasm with her wits.”

“She’s always been a bit dotty,” said Henry.

“When Dr. Curtis and Fox and I interviewed her, we were puzzled by her reference to a couple of obscure mediaeval witches. A little later she certainly suggested that her husband had been killed by some supernatural agent who had taken the form of your brother Stephen.”

“Well!” said Henry. “I must say I call that a bit thick. Why pick on poor old Step?”

“Simply because she saw him in the lift. Her behaviour at this interview was in every way extraordinary. She had, we were assured, screamed violently and persistently when she discovered the injury to her husband, yet one couldn’t miss a kind of terrified exulting in her manner when she spoke of it. Lastly, and most importantly, she insisted that his body was to be sent to their London house. I’m no psychiatrist but it seemed to me that, however insane she was, if she had murdered her husband she wouldn’t desire, ardently, to spend a couple of nights in a half-deserted house with the dead body. Unless, and here’s an important point, she had some motive connected with the body. Very stupidly, I could think of no motive and was therefore still doubtful if she was guilty of her husband’s death, since Giggle’s guilt was not certainly known. This afternoon at Deepacres Park I believed I had discovered the motive. In a copy of a mediaeval work on witchcraft we found a chapter dealing with the various kinds of soporific spells.”

“My God!” Henry whispered, ‘“The Hand of Glory.”

“Yes. The hand cut from the wrist of a corpse, preferably a felon or a murdered man. It renders the possessor safe from discovery since — but you know your Ingoldsby Legends, I see.