Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

Furthermore, there was the question of Motive. Robbery? Nothing in the house had been touched. The old lady had nothing worth stealing. Revenge? Most unlikely: she had no friends and no enemies – lived secluded with her little niece, doing no harm to anyone…. You see, there was a certain amount of sense in the coroner’s verdict…. Still …

‘Only let me solve this mystery, and I’m made,’ I said to myself.

I solved it, and I broke myself.

… Now, as you must know, when you are in doubt you had better first examine yourself.

People get into a sloppy habit of mind. I once read a detective story called The Invisible Man, in which everybody swore he had seen nobody; yet there were footprints in the snow. ‘Nobody’, of course, was the postman, in this story; ‘invisible’ simply because nobody ever bothers to consider a postman as a person.

I was quite sure that in the mystery of Miss Pantile there must have been something somebody overlooked. I don’t mean Sherlock Holmes stuff, like cigarette-ash, and what not. Not a clue, in the generally accepted sense of the term, but something.

And I was convinced that somehow, out of the corner of my mind’s eye, I had seen in Miss Pantile’s bedroom, a certain something-or-other that was familiar to me, yet very much out of place. Nothing bad in itself – an object in itself perfectly innocent; but, in the circumstances, definitely queer. Now what was it?

I racked my brains – Lord, but I racked my silly brains! – trying to visualise in detail the scene of that bedroom. I was pretty observant as a youngster – I tell you, I might have got to be Detective-Inspector if I’d had the sense to keep my mouth shut at the right time – and the scene came back into my mind quite clearly.

There was the room, about sixteen feet by fourteen. Main articles of furniture, a pair of little bedsteads with frames of stained oak; crewel-worked quilts. Everything neat as a pin. A little dressing-table, blue crockery with a pattern of pink roses. Wallpaper, white with a pattern of red roses. A little fire-screen, black, crewel-worked again with yellow roses and green leaves. Over the fireplace, on the mantelshelf, several ornaments – one kewpie doll with a ribbon round its waist, one china cat with a ribbon round its neck, half a pair of cheap gift-vases with a paper rose stuck in it, and a pink velvet pincushion. At the end of the mantelshelf nearest the little girl’s side of the room, several books——

‘– Ah-ah! Hold hard, there!’ my memory said to me. ‘You’re getting hot! … You remember the old game of Hot-and-Cold, I dare say, in which you have to go out of the room, and then come back and find some hidden object? When you’re close to it, you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re cold. When my memory said ‘hot’, I stopped at the mental image of those books, and all of a sudden the solution to the Spindleberry Road mystery struck me like a blow between the eyes.

And here, in my excitement, I made my big mistake. I wanted, d’you see, to get the credit, and the promotion that would certainly come with it.

Being due for a week-end’s leave, I put on my civilian suit and went down to Luton, where the orphan girl Titania was staying in the care of some distant cousin, and by making myself pleasant and being tactful I got to talking with the kid alone, in a tea shop.

She got through six meringues before we were done talking….

She was a pale-faced little girl, sort of pathetic in the reach-me-down black full mourning they’d dressed her in. One of those surprised-looking little girls with round eyes; mouth always part-open. Bewildered, never quite sure whether to come or to go, to laugh or to cry. Devil of a nuisance to an officer on duty; he always thinks they’ve lost their way, or want to be taken across a street. It’s difficult for a busy man to get any sense out of them, because they start crying at a sharp word.

Her only true distinguishing mark or characteristic was her hair, which was abundant and very pretty. Picture one of those great big yellow chrysanthemums combed back and tied with a bit of black ribbon.

I asked her, was she happy in her new home? She said: ‘Oh yes. Auntie Edith says, as soon as it’s decent, I can go to the pictures twice a week.’

‘Why,’ I asked, ‘didn’t your Auntie Lily let you go to the pictures, then?’

Titania said: ‘Oh no. Auntie Lily wouldn’t go because picture houses are dangerous. They get burnt down.’

‘Ah, she was a nervous lady, your Auntie Lily, wasn’t she,’ I said, ‘keeping the house all locked up like that at night.’

‘She was afraid of boys,’ Titania said, in an old-fashioned way. ‘These boys! What with throwing stones and letting off fireworks, they can burn you alive in your bed. A girl isn’t safe with these boys around.’

‘That’s what your poor Auntie said, isn’t it, Titania? Now you’re not afraid of boys, are you?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘Brian was a boy. He was my brother.’

‘What, did Brian die, my little dear?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘He died of the ’flu, when Mummy did. I had the ’flu, too. But I didn’t die; only I was delicate afterwards. I had the rheumatic fever, too.’

‘Your brother Brian must have been a fine big boy,’ I said. ‘Now about how old would he have been when he passed away? Twelve?’

‘Thirteen and a quarter,’ said Titania. ‘He was teaching me how to spit.’

‘And so he passed away, and I’m very sorry to hear it,’ I said. ‘… And your Auntie Lily wouldn’t let you go to the pictures, would she? Well, you must always obey your elders, as you are told in the Catechism. Who did you like best on the pictures?’

Her face sort of lit up, then, d’you see? She told me: ‘Best of all I liked Pearl White in a serial, Peg o’ the Ring. Oh, it was good! And John Bunny and Flora Finch——’ She giggled at the memory. ‘But we had only got to Part Three of The Clutching Hand, when Mummy and Brian died, and I went to live with Auntie Lily…. Apart from the danger of fire, picture palaces are unhealthy because they are full of microbes. Microbes carry germs…. Auntie Lily used to wear an Influenza Mask on her face when she went out – you know, you can’t be too careful these days,’ said this serious little girl.

‘And kept all her windows locked up, too, I dare say,’ I said. ‘Well, your elders and betters know best, no doubt…. But I mean to say, what did you do with yourself? Play with dolls?’

‘Sometimes. Or, sometimes, I did sewing, or read books.’

‘Ah, you’re a great one for reading, Titania,’ I said, ‘like your poor mother used to be. Why, Titania is a name out of a fairy story, isn’t it? A clever girl like you could read anything she could get her hands on, if she were locked up with nobody to talk to. I bet you read your poor brother’s old books, too. I remember noticing on the mantelpiece a bound volume of the Boy’s Own Paper. And also … now let me see … a book with a black and yellow cover entitled One Thousand Things a Clever Boy Can Do – is that it?’

She said: ‘Not Things ! Tricks.’

‘And right you are! One Thousand Tricks a Clever Boy Can Do. And I’ll bet you mastered them all, didn’t you?’

She said: ‘Not all of them. I didn’t have the right things to do most of them with——’

‘There’s one trick in that book, which I have read myself,’ I said, ‘which you did master, though, and which you did have the right apparatus for, Titania, my dear. Tell you what it is. You get a medium needle and stick it down the centre of a soft cork. Then you get a penny and place this penny between two little blocks of wood. Put your cork with the needle in it on top of the penny, and strike the cork a sharp blow with a hammer. The cork will hold the needle straight, so that it goes right through that penny. That’s the way you killed your poor Auntie Lily, isn’t it, Titania?’