Джорджетт Хейер - Duplicate Death

It was nearly five o'clock when Inspector Grant ushered Godfrey Poulton into the Chief Inspector's room. Mr.. Poulton appeared to be quite unperturbed, merely saying: "Good afternoon! I understand you want to ask me some more questions, Chief Inspector? I have no wish, of course, to impede the course of justice, but I should be glad if you would come to the point as quickly as possible! I'm expected at my office."

"Good afternoon, sir. I shan't keep you longer than I need. It really depends on you," said Hemingway. "Will you sit down?"

Mr.. Poulton seated himself without hesitation in a deep, leather-covered armchair. He did not seem to be in any way embarrassed by the necessity, thus imposed on him, of being obliged to look up to meet the Chief Inspector's eyes. He merely glanced at his wrist-watch, and said: "Well, what is it?"

"I think, sir, that you visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday afternoon?"

"I did, yes."

"Rather less than half an hour after your departure, sir," said Hemingway unemotionally, "Mrs. Haddington was discovered dead in her boudoir. Strangled with a piece of wire," he added.

"What." ejaculated Poulton, stiffening suddenly, in a way which made Inspector Grant think that the news camee as a shock to him, but which only caused his superior, one of the pillars of an Amateur Dramatic Society, to consider that the exclamation had been wellrehearsed.

"Yes, sir," he said phlegmatically.

"Good God!" Poulton paused. His eyes, under their level brows, lifted to the Chief Inspector's face. "I see. I can only tell you that when I left Mrs. Haddington she was alive, standing before the electric fire in her boudoir. She had just rung the bell, to summon her butler to show me out."

"Did you wait for the butler to appear, sir?"

"No. I took my leave of Mrs. Haddington, and left the room. The butler reached the hall as I was coming down the half-flight of stairs from Mrs. Haddington's sittingroom."

"And what, sir, was your reason for paying this call?"

Silence followed this question. Poulton was frowningly studying his finger-tips. After a moment he again looked up. "Yes, I see. You are bound to ask me that. I shall make no secret of the fact that my call was not of a friendly nature. Mrs. Haddington had been ringing up my house to ask for news of my wife: I went to Charles Street to inform her that my wife was unwell, and that it was my fixed intention to put an end to the intimacy that had hitherto flourished between them."

"Yes, sir? And why was that your fixed intention?"

"I did not care for the connaissance."

"That, sir, is not quite a good enough answer."

Poulton smiled faintly. "I suppose not. Very well, Chief Inspector! I see that I must rely upon your discretion. Before she married me, my wife was one of the more prominent members of a set which prided itself on its total disregard for accepted conventions. I do not propose to divulge any of her indiscretions to you, but I will say, between these walls, that there had been indiscretions. By some means, unknown to me, Mrs. Haddington had been put in possession of the details of perhaps the most serious of these. The price of her silence was not money, but sponsorship into the class of Society to which my wife holds the key."

"And when, sir, did you discover this?"

"Not, unfortunately, at the time."

"No, sir. Only after Seaton-Carewzs murder, in fact?"

"Recently," amended Poulton.

"Mr.. Poulton, I hope you mean to stop fencing with me. I know a lot more than I did two days ago, and you may believe me when I say that I know beyond doubt that Lady Nest is now in a Home, being cured of the drug-habit. I also know that it was Seaton-Carew who supplied her with cocaine."

He encountered a glance as keen and as searching as a surgeon's scalpel. "Have you proof of that?"

"I have proof that cocaine was found in Seaton-Carew's flat; I have proof that Lady Nest was not his only victim."

"I see." Poulton was silent for a moment. "I was never sure, myself. I suspected him, but no more."

Hemingway waited. After a pause, he said: "Was this the hold Mrs. Haddington had over your wife, sir?"

"No."

"When did you discover that Lady Nest was an - was taking the stuff, sir?"

"After Seaton-Carew's murder, and your visit to my house. How much of what I say to you do you propose to make public property?"

"That will depend on circumstances, sir."

Poulton smiled faintly. "I understand you. I did not murder Mrs. Haddington, so I must hope that "circumstance" will not arise. Seaton-Carew's death came as an appalling shock to my wife. Under the stress of'- considerable emotion - she was induced to confide in me. I should add that her nerves have never been robust, and that I did not suspect what you have discovered until an old friend of mine, who is an eminent physician, met her in my house, and - confided to me his suspicion. When the source of her supply was murdered and it seemed probable that you would discover what that source was, I was able to persuade her to go into a Home."

"You knew it was Seaton-Carew?"

"Only on Tuesday night, after his death."

"Did Lady Nest also divulge to you that she had been blackmailed by Mrs. Haddington?"

"She did." Poulton looked steadily at Hemingway. "I visited Mrs. Haddington yesterday to inform her that I was in full possession of all the facts of that old scandal, and that I should have no hesitation, in certain eventualities, in placing the matter in the hands of the police. There was no conceivable reason why I should have murdered her, nor did I do so. I have no more to say than that."

"At what hour did you leave Charles Street, sir?"

"At a quarter-to-seven. I was keeping my eye on the time, for I had a 'plane to catch."

"So far as you know, there was no other visitor on the premises?"

"I saw no one. Mrs. Haddington led me into the room she calls her boudoir. No one was present but ourselves."

"Thank you, sir. I won't keep you any longer now," said Hemingway.

The Inspector, having shown Poulton out, said: "Och, you have let him go, but he is a canny one!"

"I can pick him up any time I want to," Hemingway replied shortly. "I want those two lengths of wire, Sandy! Send down for them!"

But the gleaming brass wire which had been twisted round Seaton-Carew's neck occupied him for only a minute. Over the other, older, length, he pored for an appreciable space of time, his magnifying-glass steadily focused on its ends. He said suddenly: "Come here, Sandy, and take a look! Would you say this wire has been used to hang a picture with?"

The Inspector studied it intently. "You are right!" he said. "The ends have been straightened, but you can see where the kink was, for the strands are untwisted just there. What might that mean?"

Hemingway leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. "That's what I'm wondering. That it was taken off a picture seems certain. Where was the picture?"

"Mo chreach! It might be anywhere!"

"Yes, it might be anywhere, if the second murder was premeditated. If it wasn't, then I say that picture was in all probability hanging in Mrs. Haddington's house." He paused. "And, putting two and two together, most likely in that sitting-room of hers! We can but try! Get me through to Bromley, Sandy! I shall want him."

When the two police-cars drew up in Charles Street, their drivers were unable to park them in front of Mrs. Haddington's house, since a raking sports-model was already occupying most of the available space there. "Terrible Timothy!" surmised Hemingway.

They were admitted, not by Thrimby, but by the parlourmaid, who showed no disposition to linger in their vicinity. Informed by Hemingway that he wished merely to go up to the boudoir, she shuddered in a marked way, and said that anyone could say what they liked, but go into the boudoir she would not. She added that she had always been sensitive, right from a child, producing in corroboration of this statement Mother's apparently oft-repeated remark that she was too sensitive to live. She then withdrew to the nether regions, there to regale her companions with a graphic description of her symptoms on opening the door to the police.