Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"Wouldn't hardly notice on these oak doors, would it?" suggested the Sergeant. "Not like soft paintwork which the string would cut into."

"No; but you'd be bound to see some trace under a magnifying-glass. Which would lead one to suppose that the murderer found the door locked, and turned the key from the outside."

"With an oustiti," nodded the Sergeant. "That's what I was thinking. Only there aren't any scratches on the key. If it weren't for that, I'd say an oustiti must have been used."

"That, and about half a dozen other reasons," interrupted his superior scathingly. "You aren't dealing with a professional burglary, my lad: this is an amateur job; and whoever heard of an amateur having a tool out of a professional's kit?"

"I thought of that, but I don't know but what he might have come by it," argued the Sergeant.

"He might, but the odds are he didn't," retorted Hemingway. "Not one layman out of a hundred would know there was a tool for turning keys from the wrong side, let alone the name of it."

"Most people know there is a tool for doing that," persisted the Sergeant. "I don't say they'd know the name, but -"

"No; they'd just walk into the nearest ironmonger's and ask for a pair of forceps shaped a bit like eyebrow pluckers to open locked doors with, I suppose," said Hemingway, with awful sarcasm.

The Sergeant reddened, but said: "Well, that's an idea, anyway. Suppose the key was turned with a pair of eyebrow-pluckers?"

"I'm not going to suppose anything of the sort," replied Hemingway. "For one thing, they wouldn't be anywhere near strong enough, nor pliable enough; and for another, the grooving on them would be horizontal, instead of vertical, and wouldn't give them any grip on the key. Try again!"

"Well, sir, it's all very well, but if an oustiti wasn't used, what was? The murderer got into the room somehow. That we do know. Or if the door wasn't locked before the murder, it was after, and there's no sign the key was turned by the old pencil-and-string trick. It beats me."

"You're a great help," said Hemingway. "Ever asked yourself why the murderer took such precious care to lock the door after him?"

The Sergeant considered this. "I hadn't thought of that," he admitted. "Now you put it to me, sir, it does seem queer. Doesn't seem to be any point to it at all, unless it was just done to bamboozle us."

"Which it probably was," said Hemingway. "And I'm bound to say it's succeeding up to the present."

"Bit of a risk to take, wasn't it? Fiddling about with a door-lock when anyone might have seen him?"

"Whoever committed this murder took the hell of a lot of risks, if you ask me. If I remember rightly, Miss Herriard was seen outside the door in her dressinggown."

"You don't think this was a woman's job, sir, do you?" asked the Sergeant incredulously.

"Might have been. Don't you go getting a lot of silly ideas into your head about women! I've known some who'd have put a cageful of tigers to shame. One thing seems pretty certain: Nathaniel wasn't expecting to be stabbed. There are no signs of any struggle, not even a chair pushed out of place. He was taken unawares, and he didn't suspect the murderer of meaning to injure him."

"Come to think of it," objected the Sergeant, "that doesn't point particularly to Miss Herriard. He wouldn't suspect any of the people in the house, would he?"

"He'd suspect them fast enough if they started tampering with the lock of his door," said Hemingway. "No, it looks as though the murderer came in in the natural way, all aboveboard and open, stabbed the old man, and went out again, locking the door behind him by some means which we haven't yet discovered. And somehow I don't believe it."

The Sergeant saw the frown on his superior's brow, and asked: "Why not, sir?"

"I've got a feeling it didn't happen that way. What did the murderer lock the door for at all? It's no use saying, to bamboozle the police, because it isn't good enough. If you find a corpse in a locked room, what's the inference?"

"Suicide," replied the Sergeant promptly.

"Exactly. And if you want a murder to look like suicide you don't first stab the victim in the back, and next remove the knife. There was no idea of making this look like suicide, so the locked door doesn't add up at all." He looked carefully at the plate in the jamb, which had been torn away. "In fact," he said, "I'm beginning to wonder whether the door ever was locked."

The Sergeant weighed this suggestion on its merits. "Three of them said that it was."

"Four, counting Miss Herriard," agreed Hemingway.

"Four's too many to be in a conspiracy," said the Sergeant positively.

"The valet said that he couldn't get any answer to his knock. I don't recall that he said he had tried the door."

"You mean," said the Sergeant slowly, "that you think maybe he only knocked, and when Stephen Herriard came up it was he who forced the latch, and turned the key quickly afterwards, when no one was looking?"

"I don't think anything of the kind," said Hemingway. "I have got an open mind."

"What did you make of the cigarette-case, sir?"

"It doesn't look too good for Master Stephen, on the face of it."

"No; but that's complicated too, isn't it, sir? I mean, there seems to be plenty of evidence to show that the last person known to be in possession of the case was Miss Dean."

"Look here!" said Hemingway. "I can accept the theory that Stephen walked in here to have a quiet chat with his uncle over a cigarette (though, mark you, on the evidence it doesn't seem likely), but what I can't swallow is the suggestion that Miss Dean did. Get hold of the valet for me, will you?"

Ford, when he presently appeared in the Sergeant's wake, showed a slight reluctance to enter the room, and seemed a little nervous. Detectives from Scotland Yard were outside the range of his experience, and although he could look Inspector Hemingway in the eye, he was unable to keep a tremor out of his voice.

When Hemingway asked him if he had tried to open the door into his master's room, he had to think for a moment before replying that he had just turned the handle.

"What do you mean, "just turned the handle"?" asked Hemingway.

"Sort of gently, Inspector, in case Mr. Herriard didn't want to be disturbed. The door wouldn't open."

"So then what did you do?"

"Nothing. I mean, I just waited by the backstairs, like I told the other Inspector."

"Oh, you did, did you? Well, it seems a funny thing that a man's valet, expecting to help his master to dress, and getting no answer to his knock on the door, and finding the door locked, should walk off without so much as thinking that the business was a bit odd."

Ford stammered: "I did think it was unusual. Well, not as much as that, but it hadn't ever happened quite like that before. But Mr. Herriard didn't always have me in to help him to dress. Only when his lumbago was troubling him, so to speak."

"Which I'm told it was," said Hemingway swiftly.

Ford swallowed. "Yes, sir, but -"

"So you might have thought you'd be wanted for a certainty, mightn't you? A man with lumbago, for instance, isn't going to bend down to tie up his shoelaces."

"No," admitted Ford sulkily. "But it's my belief Mr. Herriard put it on."

"Never had lumbago at all?"

"I wouldn't go as far as to say that. He did have it sometimes pretty bad, but it wasn't always as bad as he liked to make out. If he was put out over anything, he'd carry on as though he was a cripple."

"Did he have you in to help him to dress yesterday morning?"

"Yes, he did, but -"

"But what?"

"Nothing, sir, only I didn't think he had it badly. It was mostly temper."

"Bad-tempered man, wasn't he?"

"Well, that's it, Inspector. He was a fair Tartar when anyone had got his dander up. You never knew how to take him," Ford explained eagerly. "I know it sounds funny, me not liking to go into his room last night until he rang for me, but I give you my word this is a funny kind of a house, and you had to watch your step with Mr. Herriard. If he was in a good mood you could go in and out as anyone would expect to in my position; but if he had one of his black fits on him you couldn't do right, and that's a fact."