Джорджетт Хейер - Duplicate Death

"No, you don't. First things first is my motto! I'll see the body before I get any more confused than what I am already. Take me to the boudoir you talk of!"

"Of course, it is just as you wish, Chief Inspector. I will lead the way," said Pershore, suiting the action to the word. "Sergeant Bromley arrived shortly before yourself, and is engaged in photographing any finger-prints in the room which may have a bearing on the crime, but nothing, I need hardly say, has been touched since I was called in, and arrived at 11.53 pm'

Since it would have been extremely improper for anything to have been touched before the arrival of a representative of Scotland Yard, this unnecessary assurance exasperated the Chief Inspector. He cast a fulminating look at Inspector Pershore's back, but was interrupted before he could utter the words trembling on his tongue.

"Whisht, now, whisht!" said Inspector Alexander Grant soothingly.

"I don't say you're not right," retorted Hemingway, "but if you're telling me to shut up, which I think you are, I'll put in an adverse report about you, my lad!"

The Inspector smiled in the way that gave him an odd resemblance to one of the shy stags of his own Highlands, and said no more. They had by this time mounted the stairs to the half-landing. Inspector Pershore opened the door into Mrs. Haddington's sitting-room, and stood aside for Hemingway to enter.

There were several people in the room. All that remained of Dan Seaton-Carew was seated in the chair beside the telephone-table in the angle between the door and the first of the two long, curtained windows, his face most horribly distorted, and with two strands of picturewire protruding at the back of his neck. His head had fallen forward on his breast; both his arms hung slackly beside him; one leg was stuck stiffly out before him, its foot under the fragile table which held the telephone; the other bent, so that its foot was against the leg of the chair.

The Chief Inspector observed him without blenching, glanced round the room, and said cheerfully: "Evening! No, I mean, good-morning! How's the kid, Tom?"

The photographer grinned at him. "Going on fine, sir, thank you. Out of quarantine this week."

"That's good." Hemingway turned from him, and surveyed the still figure in the chair. "Well, well!" he said, scrutinising every detail. "The things people will get up to!"

He spoke in an absent tone, and all but one of his subordinates waited in respectful silence, well-aware that whatever inanities he might utter, his quick brain was anything but inane.

"The murder, as you will see, Chief Inspector," said Pershore, "was committed by means of a length of ordinary picture-wire, twisted about the neck of the victim by means of a tourniquet, supplied by some instrument unknown. As I see it, the murderer held one end of the wire, and this instrument, or implement, in one hand, say, right, quickly passed the other round the neck of the victim, standing behind him, of course, caught this end under the thumb of the left hand, so that the implement was held, as it were, between the two strands of the wire, and gave the said implement a couple of twists, or maybe more, thus producing death by asphyxiation within -"

"Och, hasn't he eyes in his head?" interrupted Grant. "Will you not hold your peace, you silly man?"

"- a matter of seconds!" ended Pershore, swelling with indignation. "You'll observe, Chief Inspector, that the wire is twisted hard up against the neck of the murdered man, and again just below where the strands part, showing that between these two places some implement has been inserted, and later withdrawn."

"Found?" asked Hemingway, who did not appear to be paying much attention.

"It has not so far been discovered, Chief Inspector," owned Pershore.

Hemingway's glance flickered round the room. "Nothing here likely to be suitable. Might be almost anything, and won't do us any good if we did find it. I fancy I see this bird leaving his prints on it! Gone over the wire, Tom? You won't get anything off it, of course, but we've got to try everything." He nodded to the photographer. "Now then, I want a shot of the whole of this corner of the room first, taking it from about where you are."

For the next few minutes, he was fully occupied with the photographer; and when this worthy, having taken all the photographs which were demanded, began to pack up his impedimenta, he stood still for a moment or two, still studying the unpleasant scene.

"The ambulance, Chief Inspector, is waiting to remove the body, if you have finished," said Pershore.

"Is this exactly how he was found?" Hemingway asked. "Nothing been moved?"

"According to the evidence given by Sir Roderick Vickerstown and Dr Westruther, which I have no reason to doubt, neither of them touched the body at all. I questioned the doctor very particularly, thinking he might have tried to resuscitate the murdered man, but he states that he saw at a glance that life was extinct; and he did not disturb the body. Later, the Divisional Surgeon, of course -"

"Yes, I'm not worrying about him. Nothing in the room been touched?"

"Nothing, barring the telephone-receiver, which I found hanging on the end of the wire, having apparently been dropped by the murdered man. It was replaced," said Inspector Pershore grandly, under my supervision, and has since been photographed for finger-prints."

"All right. Have the body taken away," said Hemingway. "Did Dr Yoxall say - No, never mind! I'll see him myself."

The Inspector relayed the order to remove the body, saw that Hemingway had pulled the heavy brocade curtain away from the window behind the telephonechair, and said: "There's no doubt the murderer was concealed behind that curtain, Chief Inspector."

"There's a lot of doubt," responded Hemingway tartly. "And if you go on calling me Chief Inspector every time you open your mouth, you and me will fall out. It's getting on my nerves. I don't say the murderer wasn't concealed: he may have been; but from the look of things it seems highly probably he wasn't concealed at all."

"You mean, Chief - you mean that the victim was not expecting the murderer to attack him?" said Pershore slowly.

"Well, I don't myself expect to be murdered when I sit down to a game of Bridge with a party of friends. It may have happened just like you think, but to my mind, the chair's too close to the window for anyone to hide himself behind the curtain without attracting his victim's attention when he came out. If there wasn't a rustle, anyone sitting there, at an angle to the window, would be bound to see the curtain move, out of the corner of his eye. In which case, he'd have had time to have put up a bit of a struggle, at the very least. No sign of any struggle here, not a vestige. A nice, neat job, that's what I call it."

"It is a cruel, wicked murder!" said Inspector Grant severely.

"You only say that because you don't like strangling cases. All murders are wicked. I've seen a lot more cruel than this one, and so have you." He watched the shrouded body of Seaton-Carew carried out of the room on a stretcher, and said: "That's better: now we can get on! What I want to know now, Pershore -"

"The suspected persons are being detained -"

"What I want to know now," repeated Hemingway, "is why this character, who lives in Jermyn Street, gets rung up in somebody else's house. In fact, is it established that he was rung up?"

"Naturally that point had occurred to me, Chief Inspector. It appears that the murdered man himself arranged to have the call put through to this house, and mentioned the matter when at dinner, in the hearing of the five other people seated at the table. The butler states that he was not in the dining-room at the time, and knew nothing about the arrangement. I've got no reason to disbelieve him so far," said Pershore darkly, "but he's not a good witness."